“Can I safely say no one saw this coming?” I drummed my fingers on the table.
“Not in a million years.” Damian exhaled loudly. “Only a very specific set of circumstances could have moved them in this direction. And Sterling is right. It’s not about us. We were important, but not this important. I think they somehow lost territory on the other side and saw no advancement except through the hole. Either that or the zombie situation is so bad there they see the best course of action is to let the zombies die off, take over here, and go back there after an acceptable amount of time has let the zombies die off.”
Judge rubbed his eyes. “And they got through to this time stream, how?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea.” Lewis shook his head. “And if you don’t know, Judge, I don’t know who would.”
“Evander. Sandler. All of them circling Mars Station while my family remains missing. Not to mention people trying to blow us up.” My head hurt. “What in the universe is going on?”
Cash touched my hand, gently. “I’m okay.”
“Thank the universe.”
A ding sounded on Sterling’s tablet. “Someone is pinging us. They want to talk.”
“Who is it?” I stood. If we were going to battle, I had to secure the kids.
He slid his tablet to me. “Looks like Nolan.”
I stared down at the device like a foreign object. He was right. The person on the other end identified like my uncle. “Could be a trap.”
Sterling’s face lit up. “That’s my girl, thinking about safety.”
Lewis leaned next to me. “Ask him something only you and he would know. If he answers correctly, then it’s him.”
Something only Nolan and I would know? He wasn’t particularly chatty as far as our family went. I loved him like the big, giant could-be-lethal teddy bear he was. He didn’t tolerate fools and liars. No one was more loyal than he was.
I typed into the pad. If you are who you say you are, then tell me about the trip to Mars.
The first time I’d gone to Mars had been awful. There wasn’t much to do on the red planet except work the mines and trade illegal goods. Mars Station, in orbit above it, was much more interesting. Still, for security’s sake Nolan used to make trips down there to have meetings with illegal types he didn’t want on the station but wanted to do business with for things we needed. Once I stowed away onto his vessel, thinking I could look around on Mars. It had taken him five minutes to find me. But then he’d let me stay.
You were in so much trouble, young lady.
I grinned. “It’s him.”
Are you all okay? Before we went any further, I had to know.
It took a moment to ping back, and the space between felt like a millennium. We’re a little beat up but all okay. Give the tablet to Sterling.
I could think again, although the room felt a bit like it had tilted on its axis. I did as he asked. Maybe we’d all be okay, even though there were hidden ships flying through space. Maybe we wouldn’t all be killed by Sandler.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
My parents were hidden on the third fake moon in Orion’s belt. I’d been told they’d started building the fake ones as penitentiary places, each one taking on a different kind of prisoner. But these days they were abandoned, floating mechanical nightmares. Nolan, in particular, hated them since he’d spent time on a prison planet and never wanted to go back to one.
I supposed desperate measures called for desperate decisions. They were alive. They knew all about the hidden ships because they’d had a battle with one before having a second battle with Sandler. There was no way to get back to Mars Station now.
We were going to get them and get going.
Standing in the control room, I was getting ready to land Artemis. Sterling was going out onto the moon to collect my family. Damian would accompany them, and unlike the rescue of Ari, no one saw any reason for me to go along.
I was just as happy. I’d really only be in the way.
Judge stood behind me, watching the readings on the gauges. Artemis was running a little bit hot. He wanted to change out some wiring when we got back to our third location. For now, she’d make it.
A face appeared on the screen in front of me, and I darted backwards like the person was in the room. I screamed, and Judge pulled me against him.
“Diana Mallory, I presume.”
“I …” I had no idea who this person was and how they had hacked their way into my ship’s comm system.
“Canyon?”
I turned to Judge, who stared wide-eyed at the screen. “You know him?”
“Man.” Judge laughed. “You’re the last person I ever thought to see again.”
“We are all in big trouble.” Canyon eyed me. He had a device attached to his eye, something mechanical I didn’t recognize, and a severe expression to go with it.
I found my voice, a feat I was proud of. “Someone want to tell me what’s going on?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Future
With the exception of some of my brothers and sisters, everyone else was gathered in the too-small-for-all-of-us conference room on Artemis. This included my guys, my mom, father, uncles, Canyon—who wasn’t any less scary in person—and a person he’d brought with him named Rohan. He was no less scary. Rohan was as tall as Canyon and dark haired, with olive skin and a striking profile. He had yet to utter a word. Both Canyon and Rohan looked like they could carry the world on their shoulders.
I blinked. I didn’t know these people, but my men knew Canyon. He’d gotten them back to Orion, and Sterling thought he and Canyon might actually be cousins, biologically. He knew Rohan. They were trustworthy.
Sterling’s word would always be gold to me.
I’d brought Asher in with me. He wanted to be grown up. Well, okay. He could think about grown-up problems. My family hadn’t been kidding when they’d said they were worse for wear. No one had life-threatening injuries, but they were all beaten up. My mom needed to lie down and insisted she’d do so after the meeting with the kids. She wouldn’t sleep if they weren’t with her.
“Someone start talking.” I couldn’t believe I was the one leading this meeting. So much had changed with the relationships in this room I was hardly able to keep up.
Uncle C.J. answered. “Well you know our story. We had to hide. We couldn’t make it back, and it wasn’t until you were close enough we could be sure they wouldn’t pinpoint our signal that we could reach you. We knew, despite the fact that you should’ve stayed where you were, that you’d come looking for us.”
Canyon spoke for himself and Rohan. “We saw the ships leaving through the black hole and knew it wasn’t good news. They’d tapped onto your time stream somehow. I don’t know how. We got into their tailstream and held tight. We ended up here.”
I sat forward in my chair. “You just decided to do this? Bored?”
Rohan nodded. “Pretty much. Things are so bad over there. The two of us had left Evander. We had to do something. Finding out what they were doing seemed the best course of action.”
“We’re super-soldiers.” Sterling rubbed a hand down my back. “We are what we are. We can’t help it. We see a fight happening, we head out to join.”
Sterling wasn’t like that, but I wasn’t going to argue.
“So Evander is running around here now, hidden, wanting to take over the universe, but wait a second, Sandler is already here doing that.” I took a deep breath. “We can’t get back to Mars Station. What happens now?”
My mom raised her eyes to meet mine. “What do you want to have happen, Diana?”
I touched my chest. “You’re asking me?”
“Sure.” She nodded once. “I want to know. What do you think we should do now?”
All gazes were on me. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing at attention. Everyone wanted to know what I thought we should do. I took a breath and then let my words come out.
“I think that we have two major mili
tary institutions who want what we had. I think we have little chance against these two players. They don’t care about the little guy. Why should they? People, maybe us if we’re not careful, will be collateral damage in this war.” My voice shook. “I think that we can’t beat them outright. Nothing has changed. It’s always two groups fighting and screwing everyone else. Once upon a time, you were one of those groups, Mom. What was your rebellion, really?”
She interrupted me. “My mother’s rebellion. The rest of us … we did play our parts. I’m not without blame, a lot of it. But, yes, go on.”
“You had enough to eat. So did Uncle Cooper’s sister. Who really suffered between the two of you? I’m not blaming you. This is my point. I can’t go and be a rebellion. We don’t have enough resources to fight either of them, let alone if they gang up against us.”
Rohan answered me. “I don’t see that happening. Neither side is statistically going to want to share.”
“Fine. What do we do? Go guerilla warfare? I don’t want that. No, I want a life. I want to help people. I want to go to Sanctuary—that’s what I’m going to call our new location—and I want to live a life and figure out how to help the people who are going to be crushed in this war. Even if Earth helped more, and they’re already following the McQueens into Sandler territory, we don’t stand a chance against both entities.”
Silence took over the room. Had I said too much? I sighed. I should never be in charge. “Look –”
Damian answered as Cash nodded like he knew what Damian was going to say. “They’ll likely leave us alone if Sandler is too busy fighting Evander to care about us.”
“We settle someplace off the grid and help when we can?” my mother asked, her gaze digging into mine.
“Like the McQueens. If they need help, we provide it. Otherwise … I think it’s time I had a life with my husbands. That’s what I want. Maybe I’m selfish. I want roots. If it’s just going to be one monster in charge after another … I want to make Sanctuary home. Like Artemis was for me.”
My mother nodded. “Then so be it.”
Wait … what?
Judge grinned at me. “We think you have a great idea. Let’s help people. We can’t win. You’re right. Let’s see if we can have a real life. Like we were going to have on Damian’s farm.”
Damian groaned. “It wasn’t entirely my farm. We were all going to be on the farm.”
“Farm?” My father crossed his arms over his chest. “What farm?”
Canyon looked at Rohan. “I think we could farm. Or at least we could protect a farm.”
This was the most bizarre moment of my life, and I couldn’t help grinning from ear-to-ear. Had I determined our future? And everyone thought it was a good idea?
Stranger things had happened. I had fallen through a black hole and come back with five husbands.
Six months later…
We were two thousand strong. It seemed ridiculous. We weren’t fighting anymore, although we amassed weapons and ships. Sanctuary was what I wanted it to be. For the moment, it was safe. It was home. Even with two thousand of us, we’d never stand a chance in the major war going on between Evander and Sandler. I heard Sandler had tried to blow the black hole. It hadn’t worked.
At this point, we needed the McQueens to win. They had to take back their home from their father. If they could stop that side of the war, we might stand a chance.
We helped where we could. Food supplies, help after an attack. And most of my life felt very far away from the war that raged.
I lay on Cash and watched the sun set over the horizon. He had a hand on my growing belly. We believed we had a future and acted like we did, which included my baby. I smiled. It was Lewis’ baby. The genetic tests had been for our own edification. None of us really cared.
Cash pointed at the horizon. We’d built a new medical-slash-science building. Judge, Ari, Lewis, and usually Cash were in it all the time. Damian and Sterling farmed with the super-soldiers most of the time. My father and uncles had taken to building up the place. It was amazingly easy. Everyone had a place if they wanted one.
I’d never seen my mother so happy to spend time mothering her children.
It was warm. For a planet that was cold most of the time, it had a surprisingly warm spring and summer time. The soil was fertile, and with some magical science that Cooper and Damian did together, we were growing an abundance of food.
For now we were fine.
“What are you pointing at?”
Cash scooted out from behind me. “There’s a ship coming in.”
I looked down at my tablet. “Nothing is coming in.”
“Ship is coming in unannounced and hot. It’s going to crash.”
We both jumped to our feet, which fortunately, at three months pregnant, I could still do. Our daughter was going to have to deal with me basically running through her whole pregnancy.
Cash was right. There was a shuttle coming down fast. I could see the glare off the windows. Whoever it was, they knew how to get around our security, and that was problematic unto itself.
Was this an attack? We’d become completely uninteresting to the parties at war.
My heart rate sped, and Cash put a hand on my arm before he called into his comm. Sterling had seen the shuttle. They were on it.
“We need to go.”
“No.” He tugged me against him. “Others are going to go. You and our daughter are going to stay here while they assess the threat.”
The shuttle hit the ground with a bang the likes of which I had never heard before. It deafened me, and my hands covered my ears before I could even think to do so. Cash’s hands covered my own, shielding me from the sound instead of his own.
That man! When I could think of it, I would scold him. He needed to take care of himself. Grass, bushes, dirt, rocks, and every other imaginable thing in the vicinity of the crash plowed into the air. We were a distance away, but instinct had us ducking like we might get hit.
Movement by the shuttle told me that people were already swarming the crash.
“McQueen.” That was all I heard over the comm before I started running. If it was a McQueen shuttle, that meant Paloma. And they had crash-landed. Of course the McQueens knew how to get around our security. They were on the inside of our small circle. They’d have been told.
Why hadn’t they signaled?
“Diana,” Cash called from behind me. He could have probably stopped me, but he didn’t. He knew me too well. I wasn’t backing off this.
I got to the shuttle in time to see Dane carry Paloma off. She was unconscious. Ari grabbed my arm. “Are there bats? In the air? Flying around?”
I gave our surroundings a cursory look. I never wanted to assume he was hallucinating. “No bats.”
He nodded and chased after Dane. “What’s wrong with her?” I yelled but no one answered.
Then Clay and Keith McQueen were by my side. Clay, the older of the two, shouted over the frenzy around us. “Firefight. She got knocked around. We managed to lose the tail we had. They have Tommy and Quinn. My dad has them.”
That was very, very bad news. For the entire universe. Keith spoke. “We had to get Paloma away.” He looked left and right.
“They don’t know this location,” Clay answered again. “We didn’t want to know. It’s programmed into the computer, but we don’t know it so we can’t give it up during torture.” He grabbed Lewis’ arm. “You’re the doctor, right?”
My husband nodded. “There are four doctors here. She has a strong pulse. She’s going to be okay. You had her in the machine on the shuttle?”
Keith nodded fast, and Lewis smiled. “Trust us.”
“I do.”
“Hey.” Jackson ran over to the shuttle. “I want this put out and cleared. Fast. We can figure out what went wrong with it later. For now, I want it away before the satellites see it.”
Movement followed his instructions. I stepped back. I wasn’t going to be any help. I needed to get to Palo
ma and wait for her to wake.
Cash ran a scanner over Keith. He was busy. They all would be right now. I turned and headed toward the medical tent. Everything was in working order. I’d seen to it myself, daily. Rounding the corner, I came to a halt.
Jackson lay on the floor, screaming. I rushed over to him, even as confusion made my brain turn to mush. Jackson was outside. I’d seen him second ago. He was dressed differently, his clothes torn and his face bloody.
He grabbed my arm. “Diana, what day is it? What year?”
“What?”
He rolled over, yelling as he did, and looked around, his eyes getting wide. “Where is the scanner? It’s supposed to be right there. Shit. Shit. Shit. Diana, how far back have I gone? No, she needs me. You have to get to her. Diana, get to Waverly.”
One second he was there, the next he was gone. I stuttered. Oh, what the …? I whirled around in time to see Jackson coming through the door. He was dressed as I’d seen him outside. He was followed by two men whom he barked orders at.
I grabbed his arm. “Are you okay?”
He blinked. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
I pointed at the ground. “You were … Were you just here?”
“Diana, are you okay? I’ve been outside. You just saw me.”
I let go of his arm and stepped back. “What’s Waverly?”
He looked all around. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
“Ah, don’t worry about me. Pregnancy brain.” I tried to joke as I all but sprinted away from him. Something had happened, and I needed my guys.
Sterling rounded the corner, and I practically jumped into his arms. “Something happened. I’m not nuts. I need all of you, now.”
He didn’t question me. Seconds later, we were all alone in a room we hadn’t furnished yet. Someday it would be part of the medical bay. I looked around at my five. It had been such a journey to get here, where we were all together. I’d been thrown through a black hole, gone there and back again, and come out the other end with their hearts beating in time with my own.
“You might think I’m crazy.”
Judge smiled. “Not possible.” I could always count on him. My bouncy love whose brain never slowed.