“Will do.” I pushed the button.
The screen lit up. Ten seconds later, which was an eternity in communication, the face of Wes Darby appeared on my screen. I’d known Melissa’s husbands for most of my life. They barely seemed to age. His red hair fell slightly across his eyes.
Then I saw who I sought. My grin was instantaneous. Diana looked so much better than the last time I’d seen her. Gone was the pale skin, the sunken eyes, and the I’d-rather-be-anywhere look in her gaze. She was exactly as I’d always remembered her. She wasn’t alone, though. There was a large group of people with her, including her mother.
“Hi there,” Diana called out to us.
“Diana,” I answered. I wished it was possible to hug across space.
Tommy held up his hand. “Pleasantries later.” I could have sighed. He’d officially lost capacity for conversation altogether. Assuming we made it through this, I might have to teach him how to talk again. “Okay? I’m not sure how long we can hold this transmission. We’re under attack. Constantly. I have a fleet from Earth right behind me, and I cannot figure out how Dad has figured out our location. Quinn is baffled.”
Melissa stood and moved closer to their screen. “They captured Ari. Diana and her husbands managed to retrieve him. But not before they used illegal, mind-altering drugs and got all the information they wanted. It’s safe to say you are compromised. As are we. But right now, they seem to be focused on you.”
Quinn jumped from his seat. “Fuck me.”
I jolted forward, grabbing his arm. “Calm down, love.” The last thing we needed in this moment was Quinn to lose it. I wanted his intelligence not his temper. With Quinn, they were not emotions he could manage together.
Tommy had a blank face that was hard to read, but I could feel his tension ramping up. “How is Ari?”
I could have sighed with relief. He wasn’t so far gone into these battles that he hadn’t stopped to ask after his cousin, who was also his best friend. Maybe he wasn’t as lost to this as I’d feared.
“Not well,” Diana answered for the group. “But conscious. I think you can imagine how he’s feeling about this.”
Clay nodded. “Tell him we’re thinking of him. If he needs us, we’ll come to him.”
“I think the last he thing he would want is for you to cross the system to come to him right now. I think he’d rather you found a way to be safe,” Diana answered. If we couldn’t be there to help him I was so glad Diana was.
“Fuck this shit.” Tommy rose slowly, and I squeezed Quinn’s arm tightly. That was not a response I had expected. Tommy losing it in front of Diana’s family meant he had officially reached the edge of caring about anything at all. “If they know our plan, then we’re making a new one. Time to go into Sandler space.”
Weren’t we already? Did he mean the center of Sandler space?
He continued, “I’m going home.”
Someone needed to say something because I was out of ideas. How had Tommy gone from Ari was sick to wanting to throw everything away? We didn’t even know what they knew yet.
“Tommy,” Keith said, his voice calm. “Should we maybe discuss this?”
His oldest brother seemingly ignored him, although I saw a muscle tic in his jaw. He addressed Melissa on the screen instead. “The next time you guys see us, it’ll be when I reach out to tell you I’ve taken back over my home. See you later.”
He was going to disconnect, and I’d said nothing yet. I called out as quickly as I could. “Diana, I am so glad your husbands are back.”
Quinn’s body relaxed, and I let go of his arm. All attention was on Tommy. He stared at the screen like someone was still there.
Finally, he said, “I know I’ve been asking a lot, and I have to keep doing so. I don’t trust anyone outside of this room right now.”
Clay sighed. “I think that might be overkill. We’ve ousted the traitors and now we have answers as to why the rest of this has gone to hell.”
“All of that might be true. Even knowing that, I still only trust the four of you. I need plans. Three to four options. What to do next. How to take the central Sandler planet. How to take back our home. We can’t be light. I have the military we need ready to go. None of them can know ahead of time. Can you do this for me? Can you make me plans?”
Quinn nodded. “I can. Clay can help me strategize, and Keith knows the mechanics of all the ships.”
Tommy nodded. “I know this might seem ridiculous, but I think I need a nap. A big one. When you show me the plans, I need to be smart. I don’t think I’m on point. I’m asking you to stay up and do this while I go to bed.”
“Tommy.” Clay sighed. “You haven’t slept more than three hours in two days. No one is going to judge you for a nap. Go.”
He nodded and left the room without another word. I sat down. I’d take care of the comm. One less thing to worry about and I could keep my eyes on the space around us at the same time. I’d gotten good at seeing potential missiles heading for us at about the same time as the radar. It did us little good but made me feel better.
Our shields had held so far. These were strong ships.
Keith put his hand on my shoulder, and I turned to look at him. “I’m on this. Quinn needs a basic plan before I can do anything anyway. Tommy needs you, even if he’s not thinking straight. Go to him.”
I nodded. I just hoped I wasn’t walking into Tommy needing to yell. When we’d first met, I’d been on the other end of his temper and come out scorched quite a few times. I wasn’t scared of him, and he didn’t say unforgivable things.
Still, I hated fighting.
I walked in quietly. If he were already asleep, I would leave him alone and go back to the comm. His rest was more important.
I found my oldest husband sitting on the bed with his head in his hands. I stopped in the doorway. Tommy was almost never this vulnerable. I walked to him slowly before getting down on my knees in front of him.
“You okay?”
He lifted his hands. “I used to be good at this. I won and I won and I won. I made decisions. They were the right decisions. Can I only be successful at this when I’m on the wrong side?”
I put my hands on his knees. I hated kneeling except when I did it with Tommy. I liked him to know I would do anything for him.
“From day one, you have had to run to catch up on this fight. Your father had years to plan this. You didn’t even know Quinn had made a plan when you took him away and spent time healing the whole group of you. That didn’t include making up battle ideas to defeat an enemy who was always two steps ahead.”
He nodded. “Paloma.”
I wasn’t done. “Now we’ve been betrayed again. I knew he’d infested certain people on Earth with his filthy evil.” I wasn’t above calling it that. “My father was desperate to get in bed with him, so to speak. Two captains here were betraying us and now Dad’s people have hurt Ari.”
My heart clenched at that thought, and Tommy made a sound in the back of his throat. “If I could have taken him with the rest of us, I would have.”
“I know but he wouldn’t have come. He was never going to do anything but go his own way.” Ari loved being their cousin, but he wasn’t a Sandler, and he fought this battle his own way. “He’s going to be okay.” I hoped. I couldn’t know for sure, but sometimes it was okay to say something just because it made you and the other person feel better. We couldn’t fix Ari from all the way out here. We might not be able to help even if we were with him.
I rose and pushed gently on his chest. “You need to sleep, Thomas Sandler. You said it yourself. Go to bed.”
Six Months later, Earth Standard Time
The Farm
* * *
I stood, listening to a lot of people who knew more about strategy than I did talk around me. My mind stuttered on and off. Tommy and Quinn were alive. That was paramount.
“How long do you think it’ll be before the shuttle gets fixed?” Keith asked Jackson, who sighed l
oudly.
“Too long. The way you beat that up on the way down? We don’t have Tommy’s original designs, and the changes you guys made to it with those dampeners is playing havoc on my systems. Even if I push the guys, I’m not convinced it won’t be months.”
Clay nodded. “Well, months won’t do. Who wants to loan us a shuttle?”
Sterling, Diana’s husband who was also a super-soldier, raised his hand. “If I can interject, you don’t need just any shuttle. You guys had the best of the best, and you were captured.”
“Thank you for the reminder,” Keith snapped then looked away.
I put my hand on his arm, and he nodded to me. He was okay. We were all short tempered, but he hadn’t lost it yet.
“He wasn’t saying that because he wanted to point out that you lost at something,” Diana answered for Sterling. “We’ve all lost at something. Trust me on that. He was saying that because maybe what you need is the opposite of what you have.”
I didn’t follow. Neither did my husbands. When I would have answered, Ari did instead. “You were caught because of me. You’d probably be drinking Earth whisky from the control room in Sandlerville right now if it wasn’t for me.”
“Don’t say that,” three of us answered at the same time. Keith, Diana, and myself.
“Not saying it doesn’t make it not true.” Ari ran a hand through the mess that was his blond hair.
Melissa Alexander cleared her throat. “Can we get back to the matter at hand? I think I know where you’re going with this, Di. Keep talking.”
“You need a ship that will be discounted. We have just the one. Old. Seen better days on the outside. But it carried me through the black hole, twice. Wait, actually, that ship made it through the black hole four times. Took care of my family more than I can say. We reported it stolen to the space authorities six months ago. Thought that might distance it from us. A stolen ship that used to be resistance? It’ll be welcomed into Sandler space as a prize.”
I’d finally understood what she was saying. “You’re talking about Artemis.”
Diana nodded, her grin coming slowly. “I am.”
I’d never been on Artemis. She’d been famous on Mars Station. The old ship the Alexanders never retired. They loved her—like she was family to them instead of just some ship.
“There weren’t that many of her kind made.” Melissa smiled at Nolan, and he gave her the smallest quirk of his lips back. “Mostly because every time they made them, the Nomads—that was our rebel group—stole them. I took the last one. Most of them were destroyed in the nuclear explosions Cooper’s sister set off.”
Cooper groaned. “I love our walks down memory lane. Can we do this more?”
She rolled her eyes. “Sarcasm aside, you love that ship. I saw one of the ones like her one other time. On Orion. Weeks before I would be taken to have my memory erased. It was called Malice. I never saw the owner, but I stood there like an idiot grinning at the thing before I went and helped a woman’s group there that was in hiding.”
Diana’s eyes grew wide. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you were on Orion?”
“Forgot about it before now. My memory of that time is fuzzy. All of the messing that was done with my mind back then means sometimes I don’t have a memory until I have it.” She shrugged. “Long time ago. Different part of space. I think you’re right, Diana. They need Artemis. She’s just the lady for this job. What do you think, Paloma?”
All eyes were on me, and I couldn’t speak for the shock of it. I wasn’t in charge, not really, not ever. There were certain parts of our relationship—the guys and me—that did lend to me deciding things, but not this. Clay and Keith didn’t answer. They were really all waiting on me. Had I suddenly become this person? Was it assumed because Melissa, and lately Diana, were the ladies in the center of things that I was, too?
The silence was going on too long. “Sure. Let’s do that. Artemis is good luck. It brought Melissa across the galaxy, Diana in tow.”
Sterling looked at Damian and Judge. “We made some adjustments to her in the most recent use, the trip that brought us across the galaxy and then here. She hasn’t been out of use for very long. We can have her ready for you tomorrow.”
Then tomorrow it was.
I hoped I was right. We had no plan to get Tommy and Quinn out of a dungeon, but that was okay. We had a ship and that was more than we’d had five minutes earlier.
I walked arm-in-arm with Diana. I still couldn’t get over her pregnancy. “You’re going to be such a good mom.”
“Do you think so? I mean, I know Lewis is going to be a good dad and the others are going to be amazing uncles. This baby will want for nothing in the love department. I worry about me. What if I get overwhelmed and quit speaking?”
That was a possibility. Diana had suffered through that most of her life. And like Ari had just said, not saying something didn’t lessen the truth of it. “You might. But he or she…”
“She.” She grinned. “It’s a girl. Can you believe it? No, I’m sorry. Go on.”
I could believe it. Her mother had three daughters. Mine had two. The universe didn’t have enough women—that was how the plural marriages had started—but it seemed more girls were coming. It would be generations before there were enough, if then. We still had to protect girls from being kidnapped, stolen, or sold.
I had to remember what I was saying before. “If you lose your voice, you’ll parent silently. What choice will you have? You’re going to love the baby. You’ll work it out. And you have husbands who won’t let it get out of hand. It’s going to be fine.”
She squeezed my arm. “Thank you, Paloma. I think I needed to hear that today.”
“There’s something else you need to hear.”
Diana stopped moving. “What’s that?”
I’d suggested someone needed to tell Diana the truth. It looked like that someone was going to prove to be me. But what were best friends for? Even if the friendships took place sometimes over vast distances across space?
“If you think the thousand plus people are here because they are expecting to farm for the rest of their life, I think you’re kidding yourself.”
She looked down at the ground. “I’ll admit, I’ve started to wonder. I really thought we were all on the same page, all of the folks showing up and us. Let those other folks fight, we’ll make a life here.”
“Can I touch your belly?”
Diana nodded, and I put my hand on her stomach. The baby jumped beneath my fingers. A new life, a new chance. The idea would never cease to floor me.
“The truth of the matter is there is nowhere we can run far enough that we don’t have to stop and fight.” I hadn’t realized how much of Quinn’s views had taken hold inside of me. These were his words, reworked to erase some of the profanity. And they were absolutely correct.
I kept speaking. “If we stay here, there is still a war happening between Evander and Sandler. Whoever wins is just the most awful. I don’t want that baby inside of you to live like that. Okay, so do we take off into the black hole?”
She shook her head. “Not going to happen. Seems Evander has taken over that whole quadrant. I’m not going anywhere near that mess. It’s so bad over there that Evander is sending people over here. The so-called corporation. It’s a huge mess. I’m half-convinced they made the zombies themselves somehow.”
“Okay, you know that side of the galaxy better than me. Then the Dark Planets where women are readily sold on an auction block, used, abused and destroyed. Even if we could hide there and find some place safe, how long do we think it’s going to be before Sandler or Evander or whoever the heck is next goes there and conquers? At some point, we have to say no more. Nothing is going to work until everything is like Mars Station was when we were kids. Governed fairly, elections and accountability.”
Even if it hadn’t been perfect, it had been closer.
“So what are you saying? That I should go lead a rebellion? I’m not built
for it. I… They should follow my mother. Except she doesn’t want it anymore either. I’m happy to give them this place to use, to be the base, to run things here. I’m not their leader, and my husbands are only interested at this point in taking care of our family. They’ll help where they can, but they’re not leading either.”
I could hear the truth in her words. “Someone will turn up who will.”
She pushed my hair off my shoulder. “Maybe they already have. Even if they have something really big to do before they can see it.” She winked at me and stepped away. “See you tomorrow before you go.”
If I was supposed to understand what she meant, I didn’t. Or maybe I did. And I simply couldn’t fathom that she thought it was me. I wasn’t a leader. Or at least, I’d never stopped to consider that I might be. I couldn’t think about it right now. Tommy and Quinn were out there. They waited for us. We were coming.
Resistance Base
* * *
Clay Sandler
When she’d opened her eyes, one of the first things Paloma had said was that Tommy and Quinn didn’t feel dead to her. I’d doubted her instincts. It had been easier to assume she was wrong than wonder if she was right. Being right meant I’d left my brothers to a fate possibly worse than death at the loving hands of my father and his cartel.
Keith had gone to get the specs on Artemis to study, and I suspected he’d end up walking the ship with Diana’s husbands. Paloma was talking to Diana. That left me to stew.
She walked through the door, looking like a vision. Her eyes were bright again and her cheeks pink. If I ever doubted how much Paloma loved us—and I really didn’t—seeing her take the news of Tommy and Quinn’s so-called death had ended the slightest concern. She loved us like we loved her.
Paloma raised her chin just a little. “Don’t obsess, Clay.”
“How can I not?”
My wife walked toward me, putting her arms around my waist. I sighed. “Then don’t obsess too long.”
She always knew what to say.