Contact

by Susan Grant

  “I know. It might take a while before I can get in. How much time do we have? When are we due to arrive at the relocation port?”

  “I don’t know. I need to, though. And I will, Dillon. I’ll find out.” When she next saw Kào.

  Damn it. She should have been asking him those questions today and not kissing him. What was wrong with her? Stockholm Syndrome or not, where was her common sense?

  She’d call a staff meeting right away, her key flight attendants only. She’d brief them not to say anything to the passengers until they knew more; she didn’t want to incite panic. She scrubbed her face with her hand. “I’ve got to go. And what we talked about stays between us, okay?”

  “Mum’s the word. I’ll be at the computer if you need me.”

  With a nagging sense of foreboding, she watched him go. Then she turned back toward the epicenter of chaos better known as Town Square. Two hundred and eighty-six people expected her to guide them through this mess. She might not have wanted the job but, by God, she intended to see it through.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “And when she finally gave the goblet back to me, it was filled with rocks and not wine!” Commander Moray’s laughter was rich and deep. And as always, contagious.

  “Rocks?” Chuckling, Kào stretched his legs out in front of the sinfully plush chair he occupied in the commodore’s quarters. “I fear you might have deserved it.”

  “Deserved it?” His father roared with laughter. “I’ll tell you who deserved what—she did, and she got it, too.”

  His father rarely spoke of his encounters with women, and when he did, Kào reacted with the mix of revulsion and disbelief he suspected all offspring experienced when envisioning a parent’s sexual activity. Yet his father’s bluntness meant he was in fine form tonight and that more stories would follow. Sure enough, they did.

  As the commodore’s melodious voice filled the chamber, Kào sank deeper into his chair, sipping an after-dinner liqueur made from a piquant berry also used to spice stewed meat. It had been a long time since he’d been able to enjoy an evening with his father. But he’d have enjoyed it more had not Jordan’s second-in-command expressed his grief with his fists. Here he was, relaxing with his father, while Jordan struggled with the fears and demands of her people, aggravated by the turmoil Kào had caused. Trist had warned him, hadn’t she? And blast it all, she’d been right; he shouldn’t have returned the computers without an adequate briefing to curb high expectations.

  Kào half listened to his father while he pondered whether he ought to check back with Jordan after dinner. Jordan—by the Seeders, he’d kissed her. Recklessness, spontaneity—those characteristics were not what he’d use to describe himself, but that’s what he’d shown today in the arena.

  But she’d been so sweet, so willing, so right. . . .

  “Your mind is not on my tales, Kào.”

  Kào dropped his hand. Then he exhaled. “I won’t bother fabricating an excuse because you’ll see right through it.”

  Moray tipped his head back and laughed. Wiping the back of his hand across his eyes, he smiled broadly. “Thank you, Kào. I get more than my share of fabricated excuses from my staff.”

  They regarded each other warmly. “I was thinking of the refugees,” Kào admitted. That wasn’t quite a fabrication.

  “Ah, Captain Cady,” Moray commented coolly. He fingered his goblet. “She distracts you,” he accused.

  She enchants me, Kào wanted to say. But something held him back from being so forthcoming with his father. “She’s . . . a very capable woman.”

  “I knew when I first met her that she wasn’t the type to shrink from a challenge. I wonder, though, to what extent she’d go to help her situation.”

  Kào tried to place his father’s remark within the context of logic . . . and failed. “Sorry, sir. I don’t understand.”

  “Would she behave in a manner to cull favors from our officers? From you, specifically? There’s not much more we can give the refugees, or do for them, in this particular situation, but she may not understand that.”

  “There has been no favor culling,” Kào replied crisply. Or had there been? It was true, he didn’t know Jordan well. She might think that trading sexual favors for—for what? No, this was just Moray’s doing; making him question, making him doubt. “There has been no untoward behavior, sir.”

  On Jordan’s part. His, on the other hand, deserved closer scrutiny, he acknowledged as his thoughts returned to the holo-arena.

  “Be careful, Kào. That’s all I wanted to say.”

  “You have no reason to worry.”

  Moray pondered that. Then he leaned forward in his chair. His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Do you know what I missed the most when you were gone? This. Our talks. How I treasured them over the years. You were always so frank with me, always told me what was on your mind. You never kept secrets, and I know that won’t change.” His hands tightened around his goblet. “Will it, Kào?”

  Kào tried to keep his tone light. “Is that a compliment or a warning?”

  “Neither. Only a statement.” Moray smiled a soothing smile. “What, then, holds your thoughts, Kào? The refugees, you said?”

  “Like you, I’d hoped that returning the computers to the refugees would facilitate future dealings. It did quite the opposite. Their second-in-command tried to take a piece out of me.”

  Moray’s face showed a mix of emotions. “He hurt you?”

  “He tried.”

  The man’s furry white brows disappeared into his hair-line. “I hadn’t heard this.”

  “That’s because no one knows.”

  “You should have told me—told security. These are the people who broke your ribs and shattered Trist’s nose!”

  “Weeks ago, sir. And under far different circumstances. We have to remember that incidents like this will arise anytime people are contained in close quarters. Recall, if you will, Ensign Laravar and that brawl he started in The Black Hole.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Moray growled. The ship’s bar was the source of periodic trouble on an otherwise disciplined ship. “That put four mission techs in medical and cost us fifty thousand Alliance credits in damage.” Frowning, he tugged up his sleeve and began typing on his wrist computer. “I’ll assign you protection. An armed security squad. You shouldn’t be going there alone.”

  “An entire squad? Father, you must be spending too much time with Trist.”

  His father’s hand stilled. “Trist?”

  “The Talagarian linguist.”

  “I well know who she is, Kào.”

  Moray’s snappish reply aside, the proprietary glint in his eyes stopped Kào cold. It was the look a man might give if you insulted his mother. Or wife. But Trist was a minor member of the ship’s crew. Skilled linguist or not, she was low in rank, and would normally be all but expendable to her commodore. But she’d stirred such a passionate defense that it gave Kào cause to wonder if she was more to Moray than a favored staff member. Was she his lover?

  Kào couldn’t imagine it—his strapping, enthusiastic father in bed with that slim, slight, cold and cunning Talagarian. But it didn’t matter what he thought. Whom Moray bedded was his business, not Kào’s.

  He resumed cautiously, “My feeling on the matter is this: The refugees are skeptical, independent-minded, and quick to balk at minor administrative foul-ups. They’ve lost everything, sir. A show of force will only aggravate their feelings of vulnerability and resentment. If my safety is your concern, rest assured that when you taught me to use my body as a weapon, you taught me well.” Kào flexed his right arm, sore from subduing Ben. “Very well. I consider the situation settled, sir.”

  Moray heaved a huge sigh and downed his drink in a single gulp. “Then I will, as well.” The man plunked his empty goblet on a table fashioned from a delicate alloy made to look like petals of a flower, inset with chips of blue stained glass.

  Sea blue, like Jordan’s eyes, Kào thought.
Her fair coloring belonged to a frigid climate, but her skin was burnished by sunlight. He’d like to kiss every freckle on her nose and wherever else she had them. He covered a smile by sipping from his glass of liqueur.

  Then he saw that Moray regarded him with worry. “I’ll pay a visit to New Earth after dinner,” Kào reassured him. “Just to make sure all is settled.”

  “New Earth, is it?”

  “It’s what the refugees call their quarters.”

  “I see you spend a lot of time there.”

  Trist must have passed along that information, Kào thought. He decided that if his father wanted frankness, then, blast it all, he’d give it to him. “Not because I have to, but because I want to. The noise, the crowds, the smells . . . when I’m there, something imprinted deeply in my mind resonates—memories, I believe, of my origins. Memories I can’t recall. I keep returning in hopes that something will be revealed.”

  “I see . . .” Moray said.

  “I know this has caught you unawares, sir, but I know so little of the world I came from.” Or the family who’d birthed and raised him for almost three years. The desire to know more burned in him. As an adopted child, Kào certainly had the curiosity. But worries that too many questions would hurt or insult the man he called “Father” had always held him back from asking. Now they were both adults. Moray well knew Kào’s feelings for him, his gratitude and loyalty. What would be the harm in seeing what the commodore knew about the lost years before Kào came to live with him?

  That he even dared to broach the subject tonight was indicative of the myriad changes in him since the Savior had taken the Earth refugees aboard. Or, more specifically, since he’d come to know Jordan.

  “I must have been from a large family,” he resumed cautiously. “It makes sense, I suppose, my ancestors being rural horsemen.” Who had, according to what little Moray had told him, lived an unsophisticated, outmoded life, by galactic standards, on the windswept grasslands of Vantaar. “Lacking high-tech amusements, I suspect that after dark with nothing else to do they’d gather around a communal meal and share stories. I can imagine myself as a toddler in a houseful of older siblings and likely extended family, too: cousins, aunts, uncles. . . .” A memory flickered. Kào tried to grasp it, but it was gone in the next instant. The fleeting impression evoked a sensation so primal in its pleasantness that he shuddered.

  Startled, he glanced up from his drink to see Moray staring at hands he’d folded in his lap. Drained of his usual vitality and good cheer, the commodore looked weary and old. “I could never give you that . . . brothers and sisters, a mother.”

  Guilt coiled in Kào’s belly, even though he imagined it was precisely what Moray wanted him to feel, punishment for broaching what had always been tacitly forbidden: questions about his life prior to his adoption. “I don’t bring this up to cast doubt on my loyalty to you, sir. I would hope my devotion to you is beyond question. You’re my father. You raised me.” Not the faceless, nameless figure that sired him. “Brothers, sisters, a large family . . . it’s speculation on my part, nothing more. I mentioned it only in hopes that you might have remembered more. My apologies. Should I call for the meal? I’m hungry. How about you?”

  “You recall nothing of that day, the day you came to me.” Moray searched his face. “Do you?”

  “No, sir. Nothing.”

  “Ah, you were far too young. But I . . . I have never forgotten it.” Moray’s eyes took on a faraway look as if his thoughts had slipped into the past. “It was your swift feet that saved you that day,” he murmured. “Your spirit, your will to survive, glowed so brightly that it touched me in a way you cannot imagine.”

  Kào froze. This he had never heard.

  “I was a bitter and disillusioned man, had been for years—having lost Jenneh and the twins—but when I took you home it all changed. I was a man without a family. And you, Kào, a little boy who needed one.”

  Moray’s eyes glinted moistly. “Always I’ve tried to do the right thing by you. If that hasn’t always seemed the case, if my actions haven’t made you happy, or harmed you in any way, know that I’ve had your best interests at heart.” He turned his hands over in a rare gesture of supplication. “I still do.”

  “I know that, sir.” The man’s heartfelt admission indebted Kào more than ever.

  “Ah, Kào. Don’t despair. We will live to see the day when your records are cleansed of that incident in the war.”

  “The ‘incident,’ Father?” Kào stifled a bitter laugh. “That incident nearly lost the war for the Alliance.”

  “It was not your fault. Those responsible will be punished. If it’s the last thing I do in this life, I will make it happen. With you by my side, nothing can stop me. Our future is bright, my boy. Wait and see. Keep an open mind; that’s all I ask of you.”

  Kào felt suddenly heavy in his chair. He wanted a life of his own choosing, and had even revealed as much to Moray. But with the man so intent on masterminding his future, Kào began to wonder how far his father was willing to go to keep him by his side.

  The door chime rang. “Enter,” Moray called. Two young men guided a buoyant cart through the hatch. A savory scent filled the chamber as the aides set out the meal: a platter of meat, crisp-bread for sopping up gravy, and a bowl of nutrient-rich but synthesized vegetables.

  “Synthetics, Father?” Kào couldn’t help asking after the aides departed. His father usually insisted on fresh produce, switching over to fabricated produce only near the end of an overlong mission. The galley crew must have started the refugees on the synthetics before everyone else. No wonder Jordan had brought him complaints on that list of hers. “Are we conserving? Or is there a problem with the greenhouse?”

  “Conserving,” Moray replied as he painstakingly trimmed excess fat from his meat. Kào’s own piece was so tender that it fell into bite-sized pieces. “I’ve been tasked to make a perimeter run along the Rim to sniff out that reported Talagar ship.”

  The Rim was the farthest reaches of civilized space. Beyond even the system where they’d found Earth; beyond anything Kào had ever visited.

  “You’re going home, Kào,” Moray said, chewing. “Home to the region of your birth.”

  Kào almost came out of his chair. “I was born in the frontier?”

  “The most backwater stretch, my boy. As you know, your people shunned technology except for medical purposes and the most basic conveniences. They shunned the Alliance, too, kept out of politics and conflicts, content to farm, or whatever it was they called taming the land and their beasts.” He shook his head. “It was their downfall.”

  Kào’s head jerked up. Downfall? He wasn’t sure he understood what Moray meant by that. But another, more pressing question begged to be asked. “You say we’re going after that Talagar ship. According to Perimeter procedure, that calls for you to disable the craft by removing its crew and replacing it with our own. I don’t know if I care for the idea with the refugees onboard.”

  “They won’t be onboard.”

  “Where will they be?”

  “We’re taking them with us to the Rim, because they’re to be settled there,” Moray declared. “Be proud of your role in this great undertaking, Kào, for the Alliance has chosen to settle the Rim at long last, and your refugees have won the honor of being the first colonists.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Survivors—on Earth! Pure terror alternated with giddy hope in Jordan’s mind. The resulting turmoil wouldn’t let her sleep, but she was exhausted enough to try. She couldn’t afford insomnia; she had so much on her mind, so many people to take care of, so many things to get done, to organize, to fix, to consider. She couldn’t be groggy or forgetful. Or careless. But the minutes crawled by in the dimness of her quarters, and sleep didn’t come.

  Jordan’s eyes found the clock. Bottom of the second third in Alliance time, which meant it was late evening. The crew of the Savior worked around the clock in three shifts, their duty divided like thei
r day. From now through the end of the next third was what she’d come to consider “night.”

  Groaning, she rolled from her stomach to her back. She was wired. The prospect of going home, of reuniting with her family, had grabbed hold of her and wouldn’t let go. But lurking in the recesses of her mind were the terrifying what-ifs. What if Earth still existed? What if Kào had lied? And if he had lied, why? And where was he taking them?

  He didn’t kiss you like a lying man. No, he hadn’t. And that made it so tough to accept that he’d deceived her, if he’d deceived her. Why bother with affection, with tenderness, if he meant to hurt her? He could have just taken his kiss, or more, and not cared about what she felt. But that hadn’t been the case. He’d given all he had, and she’d soaked it all in. She hoped it meant that Dillon was wrong, that his hypothesis had no basis in fact at all. Facts—she needed them. And she wasn’t going to find them by tossing and turning in bed.

  She pushed herself off the mattress, pulled her jeans over her panties. Shoving her head of blond frizz through the neck of her T-shirt, she went in search of distraction. Town Square. It was late. She doubted anyone would be up. But she didn’t care as long as she wasn’t alone in her room with her worries and memories for company.

  As she passed through the hive of bedrooms, she could hear soft voices coming from behind closed doors and the sounds of one couple clearly enjoying themselves having sex. Her thoughts immediately swung to Kào. What kind of lover was he?

  She could almost feel her fingers combing through his hair as she kissed him, the cropped, silky strands damp with sweat, his long, lean body covering hers as he moved inside her, hot and wild, making her forget everything but his taste, his scent, his touch—

  “God.” Jordan blushed hard, rubbing her hands over her face. Her future was more uncertain than ever and here she was, fantasizing about sleeping with the one man who held all the answers. Maybe Natalie was right about her.

  “Hey, girl.” The husky voice came from the shadows.