trouble, while the captain kept her end tight.
“Well, good luck. Keep Major Petrovich abreast of your location. You’ll want him to find you if anything goes wrong.”
“Oh, I calculate at least fifty percent failure odds.” Wallace looked almost cheerful. Indeed, he felt a great deal more at peace, having finally confessed to someone other than Kun. He could finally see a little more clearly.
Dmitry watched him leave, feeling bleak. Maybe he’d give it one more try. The worst she could do was land another punch…she’d said she had no wish to harm him. He only knew that it would be impossible to watch her leave with Wallace and Christensen. Not without saying something. Not without feeling completely gutted.
۞
They were ready. As ready as anyone could be, in setting off for war.
Leif and Josh each had their own family references to war. The former still carried a photo of his grandfather standing on the beach at Normandy. The latter had only stories to remind him. Of an uncle who went to war for a country that had locked up the rest of his family in an internment camp. And a nurse grandmother killed when her hospital ship was torpedoed.
As they slowly packed, and organized themselves into two separate ships, Josh reflected on those two stories. He’d grown up not knowing how to interpret the muted pain that each circumstance had wrought on his family. After having had his own experiences on deployment, he’d begun to understand.
He understood that no matter what anyone tried to do, in some instances no one has any control over anything. His uncle had surrendered to that unstoppable tide. His uncle had believed that the only way to change ignorance and hate was through constant demonstration of something better. Josh had always struggled with this philosophy. Now he understood it, even if he disagreed a little.
He went to bid farewell to the monks at the temple, but could not bring himself to seek their advice. Instead, he sat in meditation for two hours, trying to collect and organize his thoughts. He needed to be clearheaded. It was possible he would be the only one who was, in the end.
They had all watched Maeve warily through the process of readying. She continued to behave in that disquietingly automatic manner. She resisted attempts to be drawn into conversation. She slept a precise eight hours for every sixteen hours awake. She consumed a precise caloric intake. She did nothing but research and prepare for what lay ahead.
۞
Dmitry could not help but feel utter hopelessness. Maeve, or whomever it was in control of her, continued to refuse his presence. She didn’t want to see him. He’d begun to convince himself that she might die, or that he would, in the course of this madness. After all, why should he be allowed happiness? What had he ever done to earn it?
۞
Tark and Sa’andy watched as the two small craft detached from the station, and began their progress back to Earth. It was a final act. Irreversible. Tark wished he felt more confidence in himself and his own abilities right then. All too soon, Dmitry would be following the others, and the station would go into martial lockdown.
Dieu me pardonne, he thought, if I’m wrong, we will all be in the worst kind of situation.
“We are not wrong in this, my love.” Sa’andy was watching him in her usual gentle manner.
“I thought you weren’t going to do that anymore.” He winked at her.
“I’m not exactly having to try. You are an open book, and we’ve lived together for long enough…it’s all just out there.”
“That’s a distinct disadvantage to me.” He pursed his lips as she smilingly entwined herself in his arms.
“Let’s try to remember that I’m not like your Earth women.”
“Hah, that’s something I’m not likely to forget!”
“Well, then, let’s work on not being so worried about all this.” She took his hand and led him off in the direction of their apartment.
۞
They had split off fairly quickly. Leif and Josh tried not to contemplate their growing unease at being separated from everyone else. Not that they doubted Capt. Nandra’s ability to keep their friends safe. They were rolling into a complete unknown. They’d be too far away to help if some ill befell them, as well as the reverse situation.
They had their plan pretty thoroughly choreographed, however.
A landing in a remote area of what had once been the Sahara would lead them up along the Nile to a seaport. From there, they would secure a boat, sail in, and swim the rest once they were close enough. A night with a new moon would give them, one might hope, enough of a cover to walk onto the island undetected.
It was a mad plan. Nobody had said it needed to be safe or survivable. Well, really, Josh would have preferred that type of plan, but Maeve was running on guidance from goodness knew where. He wondered whose programming was in charge, the more he thought about it. Was it from whomever had her first, or from whomever had them all? Even more disturbing in his thoughts was wondering what his own trigger might be. Or Leif.
What would they do if Leif went “active”, for the love of god? They were on equal physical footing most of the time, but he doubted he could stop the big guy mid-rampage. Worse, he was beginning to have his own little flashback moments. These were making him doubt his grip on what had happened back in Norway, and how they had ended up in the container.
He wanted to ask Wallace about it, but there had not been a good moment yet. Leif seemed determined not to take his eyes off Wallace, and Maeve was constantly checking their heading. He hoped they would land soon. All sense of time and distance was completely lost out here. He hated it. Space sucked.
۞
Grace and Jules were ignoring Antonio for the moment. He was trying, and seemingly failing, to ingratiate himself to Captain Nandra. It was a little pitiful.
“Jules, if I’m being completely honest, here…I don’t like the way this is all playing out.”
“I know. Not a big fan of it myself.” Julieta checked to see who was listening. The two in the cockpit were in deep conversation of their own. “Kun will be able to set us straight on some of this, but we haven’t been able to tell him any of what’s happened, not for days. Mrs. Han tried, but she couldn’t get anything out.”
“Colonel Tarkington said it was safer that way. Less chance of interception.”
“I know. But he thinks we’re all headed somewhere else, and has no idea we three are about to crash…um, land in his midst.”
“Let’s hope it isn’t a crash. Jeez.” Grace drew in a little closer. “Are we going to have to keep waiting, by the way?”
“What do you mean?” Julieta was suddenly nervous.
“For this.” Grace moved quickly, before either of them could talk her out of it. She was damned tired of acting like it was a criminal act. Hell, she’d seen couples of all shapes and sizes on the Nimitz. The station’s commander was shacked up with someone from another planet. They could kiss and be happy if they damned well wanted to.
It was nearly everything she had hoped for. To be fair, she couldn’t remember the last girl she’d kissed, so maybe she’d built up the moment a little excessively. She’d dreamed way too often about it, that was for sure. After what seemed like five minutes, or maybe an hour, she sat back and tried to catch her breath. Jules was still wearing the same nervous look on her face. By the end, it was mixed up with a little of the same dopiness that Grace was certain she wore on her own face.
“I guess that answers my question.” A small furtive smile crept out on her face. “Must have been waiting for you to make the first move.”
“You, Jules? You’re so gung-ho.”
“I have a confession. It’s kind of how I kept dudes off my six back in the day.”
“I hope that doesn’t include me.”
“You’re not a dude, Gracie, not last I knew.”
“That ain’t no lie.” Grace sat up a bit more cheerfully. “If we live through this shit, I want to go dancing.”
“That would be a very good idea.” Jules too
k her hand. “Let’s live through this, and get our asses out on the floor.”
“Your old guy….”
“Master Kun.”
“Um, yeah.” She grinned. “Does he have copious munitions, I hope?” Boom, baby, boom.
۞
Amazingly, nothing had gone disastrously wrong yet. They’d skated through reentry, touched down, and left the ship buried under camo netting and brush. Leif and Wallace had argued for fifteen minutes on their next mode of transport before Maeve pushed them both on board a public dahabeeyah.
“Are you sure we’re actually in Egypt? Where did the desert go?” Josh was staring out the windows of the boat disbelievingly.
“Climate changes, man. I’m not entirely sure what happened along here, but I think the land along the upper Nile is still arid.”
“Wacky.” Date palms and lush greenery stretched into the visible distance. “Any idea how long this will take?”
“A day. And then we will require a boat with a captain. Another few days will see us up into the Aegean. By then, the waning cycle of the moon will be in our favor.” Maeve had been listening in the same way as over the past several days.
“Thanks. That was an extremely efficient answer.” He looked over at Maeve disapprovingly. She was still busily poring over maps and tidal charts. If Josh’s sarcasm had penetrated, she showed no sign.
۞
The rest of the journey proceeded in much the same manner. Three males, watching Maeve’s every move, while she obliviously soldiered on. By the time they were on their second night aboard a swift fishing schooner, all three were beginning to tire of this activity. It wasn’t producing any results; if anything, she kept withdrawing further and further.
Leif tried to reassure himself with the idea that he and Josh had formulated while still onboard the Nimitz. They would get through to the end of finding Robert Warden, and then drag Maeve back to her senses. Hopefully, she wouldn’t pull a weapon on one of them. He heaved a weary sigh and tried to rub away a headache that had been lingering for days.
۞
On the third night, the ship’s captain came to them.
“I take you only some few miles more. Too many eyes after that.”
“Sorry?” Wallace went ashen.
“You not say what kind of place this is.” A scarred finger poked at their map. “My boys, they say is heavy guards, is too much guns. We not go too close.”
“And what, you think we can swim in five miles?”
“Nah. I give you dinghy. Is not too valuable.” He looked at Wallace pointedly.
“How much for your rowboat, then, Captain?” Wallace reached around for his currency, which was in dwindling supply.
Half an hour later, they were crowded into the smelly dinghy. Actually, dinghy was a generous term for the thing. Their fishing boat was receding into the distance. No promises to come back, either. This was their first major hitch.
۞
“Just shut up and keep the weapons dry, what do you say?” Leif was feeling a bit surly.
“All I said was that we might not have a good way off this place…might implies a slight chance, doesn’t it?”
“Wallace, I told you to shut yer face.”
“Fine. We need to go silent anyway. Wish we had about ten more people.” After that, he closed his mouth and sulked.
At least the weather was cooperating. Low clouds were drawing in around them, creating a misty haze that shrouded everything in sight. Wallace inwardly thanked satellite mapping, as they remained on course to the island. They were on an approach that would lead them into jagged shoals. This was, their intel said, the least guarded portion of the island’s shoreline.
At last, their depth gauge read that they were at three meters. Manageable. They all slipped into the cool water, keeping their weapons high, and at the ready. Leif and