"Are you going to hurt me?" It was a dumb question, Nell knew, but she couldn't stop the words from tumbling out or echoing around the cargo bay. The admiral had already ordered her killed, why would torture bother him? Fear lodged in her throat, stopping the verbal torrent of moments ago.
"Will I need to?" He turned the question back on her. While his open hand rested below her neck, his thumb stroked her collar bone. Souvenirs of death and destruction swirled around the cargo bay, cocooning them. His gray almondine eyes pinned her, just as his body trapped her between himself and the sarcophagus cutting across her spine.
His touch was not punishing or bruising. Somehow it made the knowledge that he could hurt her all the worse. Would hurt her.
"I've been honest with you." Her heart beat so fast Nell knew he could feel it. The cold sarcophagus pressed against her lower body, leached the warmth from her and made the heat radiating off him seem like an open flame. Her breasts tightened in awareness of his strong thighs against hers. Good God, what was wrong with her? Thinking of sex at a time like this, what had that contraption done to her? Turned her into a man?
The admiral leaned closer, his rugged face a mask of planes and angles in the eerie white light oozing through the cluttered space. Her emergency blanket sarong crinkled under his weight. When her erect nipples rubbed his broad chest through her thin covering and his uniform, his light eyes darkened to the color of storm clouds. "But not completely honest."
Nell's tongue stuck to the roof of her dry mouth. She could taste her fear and arousal. Tension coiled low in her belly, but she couldn't figure out which emotion had caused it. Wrapping her hands around the lip of the coffin behind her, she raised her chin. "Is anyone completely honest?"
Nell bit her tongue. If only she could recall the words as easily. Her mother always said her mouth would get her into trouble. Nell seriously doubted her mother could ever have imagined this in her wildest dreams. Good Lord. How had she gotten here? And what was she supposed to do now?
"No," the Admiral conceded. His thumb settled in the hollow of her throat. "But I will have my answers."
"I'll tell you what I know." And she would, but she doubted he'd believe her. The fact added to her terror. Telling the truth wouldn't save her from whatever he had in mind. "Every word will be the truth. Even if you want to know my real weight and age."
His lips quirked before settling once more into a firm line. His expression blanked, flesh smoothed over his high forehead and wide cheekbones. No laugh lines or crow's feet marred his tan complexion. "Have you been sent to bring us home?"
A fissure of unease egged on her fear. Nell had seen carved marble with more compassion. "I-"
"You should be warned that I can detect when you're lying. The slightest rise in temperature, the hitch in your breath and the change in rhythm of your heart." The hand splayed across her chest shifted slightly allowing his thumb to settle against the groove of her sternum, teasing her cleavage.
The sexuality behind the movement sowed tingles across her skin. A burning sensation began at the base of her skull and engulfed her head, shrinking her skin as it spread. Great, the battle between fear and desire had given her a migraine. "I don't know."
Relax. Her mother's voice whispered from deep inside her head. He won't hurt you.
Obviously, her mother/conscience had vastly different definitions of hurt. The man had already killed her once. Add to the fact her own outlandish explanation of events and?
Nell swallowed the lump festering in her throat. Her heart galloped like a Kentucky Derby winner fresh out of the gate. And yet? One look into his shark gray eyes calmed her. He was a soldier. He had rules? Sure they allowed for killing, but not torture. That was if he followed the Geneva Convention.
"You speak the truth." His finger followed the curve of her collar bone. Gray eyes flashed silver as they focused on her lips. "Are there Citizen vessels waiting outside the event horizon of the wormhole?"
"Wormhole? What wormhole?" Something stirred deep in her subconscious. She tried to grasp the thought, but it eluded her attempts. A jagged panel of metal twirled by on an air current. It spun lower as if to scalp her. Nell flinched and leaned to the right.
The admiral raised his free arm and the scrap spun away into the debris floating around them.
See. Nell's conscious gasped, with a Eureka kind of satisfaction. He's protecting you.
"Ahh, you know something about the wormhole." Setting his free hand near hers on the sarcophagus, he crowded ever closer into her space. His nose brushed hers and his warm breath cascaded down her uncovered skin.
Nell inhaled as he exhaled, tasted the peppermint of his breath. She shivered. His body heat warmed her and his exotic scent of citrus and new car infused her senses. Attraction burrowed under her skin. What was happening to her? Wracking her brain, she tried to make sense of her arousal. Was the stasis to blame for it? Or maybe some space parasite had wormed its way into her brain and seized control of her body, overriding her sense of survival with an imperative to mate and produce children. She'd seen it in dozens of Sci-Fi movies.
Space parasite? Her mother/conscience sneered. Reproduction is not alien to humanity.
Maybe so, but Nell had never felt the urge this strongly. Sure, his exotic good looks appealed to her because she had a pulse, but she'd never been the kind to fall for a handsome face or a man in uniform. Then she felt it, a hard ridge pressing against her belly. If it was a space parasite, he had been infected, too.
The admiral lifted his free hand to her throat, caressing the vulnerable tissue. "What do you know?"
"I don't know." Nell's breaths came in rapid bursts. If he tightened his grip, he'd choke the life out of her. But he wouldn't. Time passed. Her heart beat once. Twice. Ten times. With each passing moment, her skin tingled more.
"Are you quite certain?"
"Yes." She closed her eyes, lost herself in the thought of him, his gentleness and strength. Instinct shouted that this attraction was off, but the heat blazing through her burned it away. "I don't know."
"Hmmm." He brushed his cheek against hers. The stubble rasped against her taut nerve endings, sending a pulse of desire through her.
In a moment of weakness, her head lolled to the side, exposing her neck to him in a universal sign of sensual surrender.
Softly, he whispered his doubts into her ear. "You know something and I will know it too before we're finished."
He uttered the words like a lover, promising unimaginable pleasure.
Nell set her hand on the admiral's shoulder. Strength hummed under her hand. "Please."
The word was raw and begging. She wanted him. Here. Now. If she didn't?
The admiral pulled back, his gaze searching her face. Something flickered in the depth of his eyes. "Tell me what you know."
Finally, her survival instinct made inroads into her aching desire. Her lungs worked like bellows to dispel the lust rampaging inside her. Her bizarre reaction must be a byproduct of dying, or the shot the doctor had given her. Nell ran her tongue over dry lips and almost groaned as he visually followed the movement. "You're not going to believe me."
He said nothing, but shifted his weight to the right. His erection throbbed against her hip. After a moment, he inhaled deeply and no longer looked ready to lift her up and impale her on him.
"I was born March fourth, nineteen seventy-two." Nell waited a heartbeat. When his brow creased, fear awoke within her. So she was correct and somehow she made it into the future. The far future. "How old does that make me?"
"One hundred sixty-six."
Nell tried to calculate the current year, but her brain tripped over the numbers. She'd always hated math. "That's old for a human, even in your time, isn't it?"
The admiral nodded, a shadow playing tag with his expression. "A Syn-En could theoretically live that long, but not a Citizen."
Nell dried her damp palms on the emergency blanket wrapped around her body. The moisture left tracks along the silver fabric. I
f he was correct, she was more than a century and a half old. Just how big of a freak did that make her? Nails digging into the coffin-sized box she'd been stored in, she sighed. "I'm not sure how I've come to live this long. I mean, I haven't actually looked in a mirror but I don't feel old and decrepit. In fact, I feel better than I have in a long time."
She flexed her arm muscles and squeezed her shoulder blades together. That pesky ache in her back was gone as was the throb in her elbow from a childhood broken arm. Of course, it might just be because gravity didn't pull on her bones. Nudging aside his hand, she tugged the edge of her makeshift sarong higher up her chest. Even her breasts seemed perkier. Definitely the zero gravity.
The admiral's attention shifted to the cleavage under his palm. "What was the last birthday you remember?"
"My fortieth." Her mother and father had stood in line for three hours to get one of the food boxes. Aside from their usual fare of boiled beans and canned corn, her sister had made mock apple crumble using saltine crackers and dusty cinnamon sticks. Nell's mouth watered from the memory and tears swam in her eyes. What had happened to her family?
His eyes narrowed as he peered at her. "If I had to guess your age, I would estimate you to be in your early thirties."
"I age well."
He grunted. "Remarkably well considering your hormone levels are on par with a citizen at her most fertile."
Nell swallowed hard as embarrassment lit her cheeks. While she knew he'd noticed that she had the hots for him, she had hoped he wouldn't mention it, especially given his own reaction. "Can't you look me up in some database? I'll even give you my social security number, my mother's maiden name and?"
He shook his head. "Records that old would have been erased during the solar storms of the twenty twenties."
Nell blew the hair floating in her face out of her eyes, before gathering the escaped locks and tucking them under the knot at the back of her neck. "Solar storms, huh? Is there anything that remains of my world? 2012."
Except her.
He didn't answer the question. "What else do you remember?"
Her parents. Her nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters, her cat, eating pasta for months at a time, standing in line for hours just to pick three lemons from a tree. None of those things would help prove her story. She needed something time specific.
"Everyone was sick. Services were breaking down. Water was available in our area every third day. We couldn't use the electricity because it cost so much, so we had a charcoal grill in our backyard. Martial law had just been declared and there was a tank parked on our corner. We tried planting a garden in the front yard but people stole the plants, so we moved it to the back and my brothers-in-law and I had to stand guard over them. Hunger was rampant, jobs were practically nonexistent, especially at my age."
"What year?"
"2012." A montage of food riots, looting and dwindling medical services played inside Nell's head. Humanity disappeared in the imperative to survive. Desperate times turned people into brutal savages. Lost in the memories, Nell shivered. The stasis chamber cut into her lower back yet again.
Still keeping his hand on her chest, the admiral backed up a step.
Nell set her hand over his. Despite the contact, her thoughts returned to a previous time. The disinterest she felt viewing the news as events dramatically altered lives, but left hers relatively untouched. "Climate change caused never-ending rains in the Midwest, snowstorms in the deserts and dustbowls in the Northeast. Crops molded in the fields, forests burned, cacti exploded and California was falling into the ocean one mudslide at a time."
"You were there?" The admiral's words pulled her back to this metal slaughterhouse.
"With the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for a time. I'd been lucky to keep my job until January. The boss's aging trophy wife didn't see me as competition, you see. Most people didn't actually see me at all?" She waved away the thought. No use feeling sorry for herself. She survived. How many others had not? "Well that's not important."
He cocked his head. "You worked for this Save Our World Foundation?"
"No. This was before that." Nell shook her head. "I lost my job to a stupid automated receptionist and because I had a little retirement account I only qualified for a hundred and twenty dollars a week in benefits."
The words were ash on her tongue. From over a grand to barely more than a hundred in the space of a week. Not enough to feed the nine people in her immediate family. Her stomach rumbled in support of her rising anger. The adults had sacrificed their meager boiled beans for the growing children.
"You lost your job to a computer?" The admiral's hand formed a fist.
Briefly, Nell wondered at his reaction then she remembered the encyclopedia entry that had sounded in her head. The Syn-En were made up of sophisticated computers. Not that you'd know by looking at him, but still? She cupped his fist, stroked the rough skin of his fingers. It wasn't his fault. It was greed, pure and simple. "Not so much a computer, more like a guard who couldn't be bribed, bargained with, feel sorry for some poor smuck trying to sell something or make her boss feel guilty for not paying his bills."
His fingers slowly uncurled and slipped between hers. "You didn't do your job."
Nell yanked her hand away from his. The nerve of him, insulting her like that. She poked him in the chest. "I did my job. I just felt sorry for most of those salesmen. They were only trying to put food on the table and I never took bribes. I was damn good at my job."
He quirked an eyebrow and captured her wrist. Firmly, but gently, he set her palm on his shoulder.
Clenching her teeth, Nell glared at him. What did he know? He hadn't been there, hadn't lived through the nightmare. "Okay, I hated taking the calls from vendors. I mean, we had the money to pay our bills but the boss wanted to squeeze that last penny of interest out of his money before paying his bills. It wasn't right. People needed that money to pay their workers."
He nodded once. "How did you end up on my ship, working for the Save Our World Foundation?"
Nell shrugged as her stomach cramped in fear. God only knew. Too bad He wasn't here to answer the admiral's questions. Or hers. So how had she gotten here? The answer must lie in that box. Still, she'd tell him what she remembered, and maybe that would be enough for him. "After twelve months of unemployment, I used up the last of my savings and had racked up quite a bit of credit card debt."
"And you could not repay those debts." The admiral rubbed his jaw.
As if that explained anything. Nell snorted. Besides, most charges had been medical bills and medicines for her sister and niece. "I wasn't the only one. So many people were filing bankruptcy that Congress was ready to pass an amendment forcing people into indentured servitude until they paid off their debts. Crazy as it sounds, most people supported it since the company they'd be bonded to would have to feed, house and clothe them. Sixty-five percent unemployment can make the most ridiculous thing look good."
"So you were indentured to the Save Our World Foundation?"
"No!" Nell straightened her back as much as being wedged between him and the sarcophagus would allow. "I was ready to meet with a lawyer to get the bankruptcy paperwork going when I got a job interview with Save Our World."
"The Syn-En were not created until 2025. How could the Save Our World Foundation know about them thirteen years prior to their formation, let alone send you to save us?"
And that was the million dollar question.
"I don't know." Although her presence here indicated the foundation knew. If the wreckage in the cargo bay and the empty space visible through the gashes in the wall were any indication, the Syn-En definitely needed saving.
"So you lied when you said you'd come to save us?"
Nell glanced at his hand still resting against her chest, keeping her from floating away like an free helium balloon, and decided to keep her thoughts to herself. If he really could detect lies just by touching her, he might punish her for them as well. "I signed
up to save Earth, her people. Europe's growing season had been disrupted because of the mini ice age; Mt. Etna blew, lowering the temperatures even more. Russia was expanding once again into Eastern Europe to gain ports that weren't frozen, and my brother was stuck in the middle of it. He'd been called up with NATO forces to defend Poland."
He looked at her as if she spoke a foreign language. Heck maybe she did. A hundred and twenty odd years was a long time to be missing. "These are subsidiaries of Save Our World?"
Shaking her head, Nell pressed on, praying something she said would ring a bell and prevent him from torturing her. "Save Our World was looking for volunteers to help. While most of my skills were administrative, I had helped FEMA during the California real estate shake up, so I knew there'd be lots of paper pushing and record keeping. I got a job interview."
He cocked his head to the left, set his free hand on her shoulder. "Then what happened?"
"I told them about my brother, my experience and my desire to be sent to the European Front. Of course, they knew that if we couldn't supply proof of life, the government would stop paying my brother's salary and well, my parents, sister and five other family members relied on that income." Shame roiled through her. Hearing her words, he might think she cared more for money than her own flesh and blood. Dammit, dead soldier and POW families got benefits, but missing soldiers were treated as deserters and those they left behind received nothing. Nothing! "I needed to get to Europe to find proof that my brother was still alive. Save Our World could get me into the disaster areas, put me in contact with the military."
"Did you?"
No. Nell bit the inside of her mouth to keep from crying out. God, what must her parents think of her? "I got called back for a second interview and then?"
She shrugged and flashed her palms at him.
"And then?" His fingers slipped around her neck.
"That's it. I remember the waiting room. I had a tickle in the back of my throat and thought I might be coming down with the flu so I had drunk a lot of peppermint tea and was about to ask to use the rest room when I was called. The next thing I knew, I opened my eyes and there was this guy looming over me squeezing my?" She gestured down to where his hand was. "Then that crazy woman with her needles and you."
His gray eyes narrowed a fraction. "You want me to believe you're from over a century ago come forward in time to save us?"
"I don't expect you to believe it." Nell gulped as hysteria threatened to bubble out of her. She set her hand over his, knowing she wouldn't be able to stop him if he decided to strangle her but determined to try anyway. "Honestly, I'm having a hard time thinking of this as anything other than a dream."
"Do you have proof?"
She snorted. "Where exactly would I put it?"
Soft as a caress, his gaze skimmed down and then up her body. "There are places."
Nell squeezed her legs together. "There better not be!"
His lips twitched. "Shang'hai found a data recorder on your life pod."
Feeling cold air against her teeth, Nell clicked her mouth shut. He deliberately let her think he planned a body cavity search. Should she take it as proof of a sense of humor or sadistic streak? She forced the thoughts aside. "Shang'hai? You're talking about the pink haired woman who left with the box, right?"
"Yes."
"Well good. Then I hope we both get answers about how I got here."
He tapped her jugular, matching the beat of her heart. "Yet, even if a human could be put in suspended animation for over a hundred years, it would not explain how you know about the wireless array."
Nell blinked as unease traveled down her spine. Nor did it explain why her mother/conscious sometimes sounded like an encyclopedia entry. But according to Sci-Fi shows, space parasites could. Somehow she doubted the Admiral would be any more receptive to the idea than her mother/conscience. "No. I guess it wouldn't."
"So you see you've left me with no choice but to try another tactic to get at the truth."
"I've told you the truth!" Nell clutched his hand, trying to drag it away from her throat.
"But you know more than you remember." He leaned in close again until his lips brushed the shell of her ear. "And I've been trained at releasing those suppressed memories." Rearing back, he shook off her grasp and raised his free hand. The fingertips flipped open to reveal the winking blades concealed inside the digits.
"Please." She blinked in disbelief at the emerging scalpels, then fear seized her. Nell planted both hands against his shoulders and shoved. Still trapped. "Don't do this."
"Admiral." Entering the cargo bay, Shang'hai stepped through the debris and stood next to Nell.
Bei glanced at his chief engineer, surprised and annoyed at her interruption. Shifting to hide his erection, he tamped down his desires. He didn't like the effect she had on his control, yet he seemed powerless to stop it. How had the woman gotten to him so quickly? "You have a report."
Shang'hai looked at Nell and a bundle of her concern hit him through the wireless array. "Shields will be restored to half power in thirty minutes. Hull repairs will require three days, otherwise shearing will be an issue when we engage the fusion engines. Thrusters will be online in two hours."
"That could have been sent on the WA." Watching his engineer, Bei set the surgical knives against Nell's neck. The human had been afraid, then excited. He had felt both as keenly as if they were his own.
"I don't think this could." Shang'hai lifted the skin of her forearm, revealing the narrow compartment between her metal ulna and radius bones.
Nell leaned to the left to get a closer look, fascination written on her face.
Shang'hai extracted a rolled up LCD and smoothed it open on the side of Nell's life pod. Images and data streamed down the white background. "According to the log, the human has been in suspended animation for over a hundred and twenty years."
Bei read the date stamps next to Nell's recorded vital signs. "That confirms the doctor's report regarding her immune system."
"You believed me? The whole time?" Nell punched his shoulder before hissing in pain and shaking her hand. "Then why were you going to torture me!"
As the screen changed from white to blue, Shang'hai said, "That's not the interesting part."
"What?" Nell wiggled against him. The motion freed one pert breast from her covering.
Bei stared at the pebbled nipple and his lower body tightened. Perhaps he should run a diagnostic on his cerebral interface. It should be mitigating her affect.
Catching his gaze, she tucked herself out of sight and shook her head slightly. "What do you mean?"
Although he knew she wasn't as unaffected as she pretended, he didn't challenge her on it. The attraction was too strong to be denied, yet it would have to be explored later.
A dashed line marked a path on a star map on Shang'hai's screen. It crossed a series of folds that indicated the wormhole's event horizon and shot toward a solar system. "She was headed toward a planet on the other side of the wormhole."
The flight path ended on the fourth planet from the yellow star. Bei's heart kicked into overdrive. How could that be? "Terra Dos."
Shang'hai shrugged, unstuck her LCD, rolled it up then returned it to the storage compartment. "Telemetry is off, but must be an M-class planet given her natural state."
"Any idea who sent her?" Bei asked, half listening. There must be a way to get to that planet.
"No, Sir." Shang'hai scratched her scalp through her pink hair. "I'm running encryption programs to break the written notes. The only reason I got the time and trajectory was because I knew the co-ordinates of Earth and our present location."
Nell laid her hand on Shang'hai's now closed compartment. "Did the log say anything about my mission?"
Shang'hai shook her head. "Sorry."
With the proof of a habitable planet on the other side of the wormhole, Nell Stafford really could save the Syn-En. Bei's thoughts returned to the timeline. How could they have known about thi
s over a hundred years ago? Unless they hadn't. "Is it possible that Earth tried to save some people fearing the plagues would wipe everyone out?"
Nell snorted. "I hardly think I'm the Eve type, besides there'd have to be an Adam. You know the first man and woman."
Bei nodded. Although, he didn't believe in anything, humanity's religions had been incorporated into his database. "And procreation of the species."
"Yeah. Um." Her pale cheeks turned pink.
"Interesting." Bei monitored her vitals and was reminded of her potent fertility. Had she been an attempt to save humanity from the plague? At forty, the UEN considered her ripe for reproduction, but would an over populated world of the early twenty-first century see her that way?
Nell cleared her throat. "What are you going to do with me now? And please don't say you're going to kill me. Even for a short time."
"I still need the information you have." And she knew something, the cerebral spike he registered when he mentioned the wormhole confirmed it. But would it be any use a century out of date?
"There's one other thing, Admiral." Shang'hai's soft voice interrupted his thoughts. "As soon as we brought the com system online, the bitch's little recording played. The civies are not happy, some have even armed themselves and are threatening to sabotage the ships."
Shit. A thousand punishments for Burkina Faso flashed inside Bei's skull. He had forgotten the citizen's death had been digitally recorded. "And the transmission?"
"I stopped it, but the damage has been done." Shang'hai jerked her head to the com terminal embedded in the wall. An image of Nell flickered on the screen.
"That's me?" Nell sucked in a deep breath. "Oh my God, the camera does add ten pounds."
"I'll make an announcement in fifteen."
"Aye, Admiral. I'll send the word." Shang'hai glanced from the human to him. "The bridge com unit hasn't been repaired yet, but this unit is working."
"I'll be transmitting from my quarters." Bei focused on the citizen. She could keep her secrets, for now he needed something else from her. "That is if Nell is really here to save us."
Overwhelming strength and fear will only control a population for a short time. For long term occupations choose leaders who will believe mission objectives mesh with their own goals and perhaps even their ideas.
Containment and Control Strategies
Syn-En Vade Mecum
Chapter Seven