by Bianca D’Arc
What he found when he finally managed to locate his cabin, however, was quite a bit above what he’d expected. A basket of fresh fruit awaited him on a low table set amid a small grouping of comfortable looking chairs. He had a large desk and comp unit in one corner, and a full vid setup in another, with his choice of all the latest vids. He searched through the menus quickly, looking for something that would send him to dreamless, peaceful sleep. Something by Diva. But there was not one of her vids set up in the queue.
John shrugged and gathered a Diva vid from his duffle, inserting it into the player. He sighed as her voice poured forth and stepped out of his uniform. A quick cycle through the fresher and he’d be ready for a few hours of downtime. John had just pulled on a loose pair of sleep pants when his doorchime sounded.
“Enter.”
John expected it to be one of his men, checking some last-minute detail, but was floored by the wide, shocked eyes of Diva herself when the hatch slid open. She stood there for a moment, staring at him—or, more accurately, at his chest. John looked around for something to put on, to ease her discomfort, but there was nothing within easy reach. Then, her scent wafted to him, and he forgot all about covering up his scarred body. She smelled of… Longing was the only way he could describe it.
The Enhanced genetics that made him an excellent soldier also gave him an edge over most normal humans on other fronts. His sense of smell was highly developed. John hadn’t been able to isolate Diva’s scent when he’d met her before because of the crowd, but now, her lovely scent filled his nostrils and his being. She was spectacular, and aroused, if he was any judge.
Now wasn’t that amazing?
“Player off.” Diva spoke the command that stopped the vid playback, shook herself as if she was trying to gather her wits and faced him. “I’m sorry to barge in on you, Captain.”
“Not a problem, ma’am.” Damn if she wasn’t cute when she was flustered.
“I have a standing order on this ship. If one of the crew starts playing one of my discs or vids, the comp pings me.”
“You don’t like people listening to you?” John crossed his arms, observing her eyes following the play of his biceps with some satisfaction. “You’re in a funny profession if that’s the case.”
She laughed, and John had to keep his body from reacting too eagerly to her proximity. She really was too gorgeous for her own good.
“I don’t like my band members listening to recordings. It helps keep things fresh when we play live. And why should anyone listen to a recording of me when I’m right here?” She shrugged and tried to laugh, but her eyes were glued to his shoulders and a blush stole up her cheeks.
“Would you do that? Would you sing for me?” He couldn’t believe he’d let the words escape his mouth, but they were out there now. Between them.
She visibly gulped as his voice dropped down low and intimate.
John took a step toward her, expecting her to bolt, but she held her ground. He liked that. He could nearly taste her fear, yet she stayed put, facing him down. She had courage as well as beauty and brains. The more he saw of her, the more he liked her.
“I suppose I could sing for you, John.” Her eyes swept up to meet his, and his heart stuttered. There was something so innocent, so trusting…so hopeful, in her eyes.
He took a step closer.
“You know, I’ve gone to sleep with your voice in my head for the past three years. My men kid me about it, but now, I don’t think I can sleep without you.”
The double entendre wasn’t lost on her, he could tell, but she backed off, her gaze skating sideways before she took a step back toward the door.
“Well, we can’t have that.” She paused by the door. “What time do you have to be back on duty?”
“Oh-three-hundred.” He wasn’t sure what she had in mind but was willing to follow wherever she would lead.
“Hmm. That doesn’t give us much time.” She bit her lip in a way that made him want to replace her teeth with his own. “Wait right here. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She disappeared through the open hatch, and John couldn’t help but step forward to peer out the doorway. He caught sight of her ponytail disappearing through the hatch next to his. Damn if they hadn’t put him in the cabin beside hers. How would he ever sleep now, knowing that gorgeous bundle of femininity and astounding talent lay just beyond a lonely plastisteel wall?
She reappeared a moment later with a large wooden object in her hands. John recognized it as an ancient guitar she played sometimes on stage and in her recordings. He stepped back to let her enter, and she looked up from the priceless instrument, her breath catching in her throat as she met his gaze.
“Do you mind listening? I’ve been working on something new, and I’d like a second opinion.”
“Are you kidding?”
Innocence shone from her wide eyes. “No, I’d really like your opinion. You’re the perfect person, in fact. It’s a song I’ve been writing in memory of my father.” Her voice faded to a gentle whisper as she talked of her dad, and John remembered her telling him that her father had been lost in the Rim Wars.
Though he hadn’t seen her since that first and only brief meeting at the reception, John realized he felt comfortable in Diva’s presence. More comfortable, in fact, than he usually felt around anybody who wasn’t part of his unit. She put him at ease and made him want to tease her.
John led the way back into his spacious room, letting her decide where she would sit. He wasn’t surprised when she made for the grouping of chairs he’d noticed on the way in. She sank down into the couch, tucking her little feet up under her as she settled the guitar on her lap. John could barely believe he’d be the recipient of a solo serenade by his favorite music artist, much less that Diva didn’t seem to mind that they were alone together in his quarters and he was only half dressed.
Well, he could remedy that problem fairly easily at least. John reached into the wardrobe and put on a short robe he’d picked up when he’d been stationed to Atlantia Station during the atmospheric malfunctions. Until they’d straightened out the station’s temperature controls, one never quite knew if they’d be sweltering or freezing from one minute to the next.
Diva felt her heart clench when John admitted that he listened to her music every night. The naughty way he’d phrased the compliment had also made her a little shaky, but she did her best to hide the juvenile reaction. She was a grown woman, even if she didn’t have all that much experience with men.
She liked John Starbridge, though. This was a man her father would have liked. Her mother too—if she hadn’t died a few years ago. Maggie could easily imagine her parents meeting and approving of such a man, if they’d lived to do so. Diva missed her father—the greatest influence in her life—so much. After going missing on a deep cover mission, he’d been declared dead, but Diva still secretly held out hope that someday, some way, her father would come home again.
It’s why she did what she did. Oh, she would have performed her music regardless, but her additional duties as one of the human defense forces’ premier spies had come about as a way to serve her people and work toward bringing all the missing soldiers home again to their loved ones. It was something in her blood. She was, after all, the impossible result of an unblessed union.
Her father had been one of the first Enhanced Spec Ops warriors. Her mother, the daughter of a brilliant general. There hadn’t been rejoicing when the young girl had fallen pregnant. By all rights, the genetic experiment that had Enhanced her father should have left him sterile, but it hadn’t. Diva was the result—an unplanned, unexpected result.
Half Enhanced, she had abilities most regular humans could only dream of. It made it hard for her to relate to most people on a close basis, and her talent and fame only finished the job of alienating her. Still, she wouldn’t trade her abilities or her position for anything. She’d been able to do some real good in the continuing skirmishes on the rim with her intelligence work. No
, Diva wouldn’t give that up for the world.
But this Captain Starbridge posed a problem. He made her want things—yearn for things—she’d never wanted or yearned for before. She would bet anything he was Enhanced, like her dad, and he seemed to look at her and see her, not some idyllic image from a music vid. He even teased her, which is something very few people did these days. She loved that about him.
But he could never know what she was.
The military had decided to keep her parentage under wraps. It would be safer for humanity if they didn’t know the Enhancements could be passed on in subsequent generations. Purists objected enough to the few Enhancing programs quietly run by the military. They would never stand for altering the human genome by adding animal and alien traits in a way that could be passed from parent to child.
All active duty military personnel received conception blockers in their daily rations. A mixed gender force required some concessions to human nature. If they were going to be sleeping together, they at least needed to keep up with their contraception. It wouldn’t do to have female soldiers—and women on all the planets visited by the armed forces—falling pregnant all the time. So the military, with typical efficiency, took care of it.
It wasn’t foolproof, though. Sometimes circumstances intervened and certain soldiers on special missions didn’t eat military rations. Sometimes they met the loves of their lives and spent a lot of time away from the mess hall. Occasionally, an Enhanced soldier retired from the field and made his way in the civilian world—though he was never completely free of his military minders. Generally, Enhanced men who could no longer fight on the front lines ended up in intelligence circles, running covert ops or seeing to their own stable of spies and informants while keeping up a civilian façade. They certainly didn’t eat military rations with their usual load of contraceptives. And they certainly weren’t monks.
So Diva and a small handful of other second generation Enhanced children existed quietly and in secret, their pasts shrouded in mystery. Just about every one of them did covert work for the military. That, it seemed, had been passed down from their soldier fathers, along with some of the Enhancements.
Diva thought she recognized a fellow Enhanced in John Starbridge, but she would never know. Nor would he ever know about her. It had to be that way for their own safety. Enhanced soldiers weren’t accepted very well, but there were more than a few out there, doing the job, volunteering for the Enhancements and fighting the good fight. Diva would bet John was one of them.
He certainly had the body to prove he was more than human. His shoulders were broad and muscled, his torso lean and sculpted. His biceps literally made her drool, and he was a good foot and a half taller than she. All in all, he dwarfed her, giant that he was, and she liked the feeling of security that gave her.
Diva remembered her father being a big man, though in reality, he’d probably been at least six inches shorter than John. Still, he’d made her feel small and loved as he swung her around in the air. He’d been such a great father and an even greater soldier.
She began to strum the strings of the guitar, pausing a moment to tune one of them. John had pulled on a short robe, and she regretted losing sight of all that hard muscle, but she knew it was probably for the best.
“I told you about my dad, didn’t I?” Diva watched John settle in the chair across from her.
“You told me he died in the Rim Wars.”
“That’s true, but not exactly.” She wondered how much she could tell him without giving too much away. It was important to her that he know a bit more of the background to her latest composition so he could understand it fully. She didn’t care if others didn’t get all that she meant by her carefully crafted words, but for some reason, it was important to her that John understand. “My father went missing in 2416 while doing recon out near the Pyramid.”
She knew he’d understand the star jockey’s slang for a region of space bounded by five stars in a roughly pyramidal shape. The region was as notorious as the old Bermuda Triangle back on Earth, swallowing many ships and cargoes whole, never to be seen again. Legends abounded about the place, and it was no coincidence that the area contained the only known naturally occurring jumpsite in the galaxy. That it was notoriously unpredictable was no big surprise to anyone, and the region had been cordoned off since the discovery was made—just after her father had gone missing all those years ago.
“I’m sorry, Diva.”
Suddenly, that name grated on her ears. “My father named me Maggie, after his mother. Diva is a stage name. I’d say you qualify to call me by my real name, John, though few people do nowadays. I trust you not to go telling anyone.”
“Is it a secret?”
She shrugged. “Everything about me has to be kept under wraps unless I want to see it splattered across the news vids. I like some privacy, so I’ve kept my real identity as quiet as possible. We all have our tragedies. I don’t want to exploit my father’s disappearance for my own gain. If the paparazzi got ahold of his story, it would be all over the place. People would be distracted by that and not hear my music, and that’s what I’m all about. Not my past.”
It sounded good, but it wasn’t quite the truth. She was very much influenced by her past, though she could never really acknowledge it openly.
“Then I’m honored you’d trust me with the information.”
“I knew the moment I met you, John, that you were a man of honor. I think my dad would’ve liked you.” She strummed a few chords experimentally. “I’ve been writing this in his memory, though you’re probably the only person who hears it who might understand fully what it’s about. I’m calling it ‘Warrior’s Lament’.”
She launched into the song then, getting lost in the chords and phrases she’d labored over for the past few weeks. She’d started it the day after meeting John, in fact, and had only done the final polish on the words the night before. Meeting John had impacted her greatly, though they’d only had a few minutes together. Still, he was a striking man, and though he reminded her of the kind of man her father was, she found herself attracted to him on an altogether different level.
She wanted him. Badly.
But she couldn’t have him. Her mission was too important, and it wouldn’t be fair to begin something she could never finish. To either of them.
Chapter Two
John sat back and listened, relishing the sound of her voice. It was even more sweet and beautiful in person than on the various recordings he had of her. Diva—no, make that Maggie—had gifted him with a tiny piece of her past and her real self. As a warrior, he knew there was power in a name. That she’d given him her real name so freely was something special and potent.
The words she sang were well-crafted and haunting. He hadn’t expected anything less from her, but knowing that he was the first outsider to hear this new tune was very special. John put his head back and watched her from under heavy eyelids. He’d pulled an extra-long shift getting them off the ground and then underway. He was really tired, but he was also astounded at the generosity of this small woman, to play and sing for him simply because she could.
The song was beautiful. She was beautiful. If he wasn’t careful, he could easily fall for her, and John knew that was not a winning proposition. He was a soldier. An Enhanced one at that. He had no right entertaining the idea of a relationship of any kind with a woman like this. Not only was she a galactic superstar, she was a good and kind soul.
She continued to sing, her beautiful dark green eyes looking up at him from time to time as she focused her energies on the words and chords of her song. It was haunting. The verses talked about a soldier’s last mission. He knew now she was singing of her father and that made the already poignant tune even more special.
When she finished the last note, she let it ring through the air for a few moments before hushing the strings of the old instrument. She looked up at him then, her gaze charmingly uncertain.
“What did you th
ink?”
John smiled. “It’s beautiful. An instant Diva classic.”
“Oh, I don’t know if I could record this. I was thinking of just doing it for the soldiers. I think they’ll understand and appreciate it more than the general public.”
The idea touched him. “I think you’re right about that, but not to record it would be a shame. Many of those troopers have wives and children who would love your song, and it could be used in tribute to the fallen.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” She cocked her head as if thinking. “But I don’t want to make any money off this one. It’s too personal to reduce to commerce.”
“Then donate the proceeds. There are a few widows and orphans funds that could always use an influx of cash.”
“John, that’s a brilliant idea!” She laid the guitar aside and nearly bounced off the couch as she thought through the possibilities. “My label couldn’t argue with that. It’s good PR all the way around, and I still get to do what I want without having to sell my left kidney to do it.”
“I thought you were Diva, the All Powerful.” He had to chuckle. “I had no idea there were people who got to tell you what to do with your music.”
“You’d be surprised.” She shook her head, setting the little ponytail of her hair to wagging. “It’s business, just a different kind. My recording label has a lot of say over what I do with my songs, and my manager, Binki, books my concert dates. It’s all I can do to squeeze in a few benefit shows each season, and they grumble at me all the while. Then I remind them who pays their salaries, and they eventually let me have my way, but it’s an uphill battle all the same.” The clock chimed softly, alerting the even shift change. “My goodness, is it really that late already? I’m sorry, John. I didn’t mean to keep you awake.”
