Diana nodded. “I’ve gotten so used to you being polite and not eavesdropping I forget you’re not the only one who can. Go, please. I’m already anxious that Helene is out of my sight. I need to talk to Paloma and then get her back. With her here, I can’t concentrate on anything but her.”
I got to my feet. “Diana, whatever this is, I’m sure it can wait.”
She shook her head. Sterling left the room, closing the door tightly behind him.
Finally, she answered. “If it could wait, I would wait. Trust me. I’m tired. Sore. Bleeding. I want my baby, and my breasts are starting to hurt. You need to hear this.”
None of that sounded wonderful. But the baby had been a dream. “Go on.”
“Months ago, when you first crash landed here with Keith and Clay, I had an unusual experience.” She rolled over, wincing a bit, and grabbed her tablet from the bedside table. “Jackson appeared before me in the hall. One second he wasn’t there, the next he was. Like he popped out right in front of me. To make that odder, I had just seen him outside, going to take care of your broken shuttle. He was in different clothes. The point being, it was Jackson but not the Jackson of now.”
I tried to make sense of what she had just said. “I don’t think I…”
“He time traveled. Well, a Jackson from some other time did. He doesn’t know anything about it, the Jackson of now.”
Keith talked about this stuff sometimes, but it was all theoretical. If he thought it was hypothetically possible then maybe it was. “Okay.”
“He said some things to me. First he asked me what day it was. What year. He was looking for a scanner, it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. He cursed. Then he asked me how far back he had gone. Then he said something else.” She grabbed the tablet and scratched something onto it using her finger. I stared down at the message. It read: Diana, get to Waverly.
My mouth fell open. “That’s why you sent him to me. To Artemis.”
“I thought maybe whatever was going to happen was going to happen there. Now I know better. Only my husbands, and possibly Canyon and Rohan, know any of this. Today, when I went into labor, Judge was with Quinn, Keith, and my Uncle Wes. Wes doesn’t know about this. He thinks there’s the possibility that the time stream scanner he used to get to me on the other side of the black hole may have other uses. They talked about time travel. Quinn became bored I guess and left—not his thing. But Keith stayed. Judge said he was very enthusiastic, got really excited. Thought maybe it was possible. Listen to me, Judge didn’t tell them what he knew. He wanted to check first. It is possible.”
I understood what she was saying. “Because we know they’ve done it. Or at least you did.”
“There are two scanners. The one Wes put in Artemis to get to me across the hole and the same much older version of it that we found on Orion. We don’t know how that was there at all. And now we have Jackson traveling through time. Talking about the person I just wrote down.” She swiped her finger, and the words vanished off the tablet. “You have to know about this because face it, Paloma, you’re going to be in charge.”
“What?” I shouted and then wished I hadn’t. At least I hadn’t yelled with the baby in the room. “Why would you say that?”
“You were born for leadership. You’re good at it. People listen to you. If you can keep your husbands as happy and calm as you’ve made them, then you are really incredibly talented at this. Paloma, it can’t be me. I don’t like talking that much. I’m going to have to stop soon. I want to run things here. The farm. The trade. I don’t mind being in on decisions. My mother wants Mars Station back. That’s her kingdom. Help us, Paloma. You have to do this.”
I took her hand. “Okay, you’ve told me. I’ll… figure out what to do. You take care of Helene, get some sleep when you can. I want to be a mom soon, too. And… I’ll need lots of advice.” I did need to know one thing. “Why didn’t you say aloud what you wrote down?”
“I think that person deserves to have as few people as possible know things about him or her that he or she doesn’t know, right?”
Diana had always been more adept at reading people’s feelings than she gave herself credit for. “You’re right.”
I went for the door. I needed to find Keith. I needed to think. I opened it, nearly colliding with Lewis who held a crying Helene. “She’s hungry.”
Diana jolted up to a full sitting position. “Give her to me.”
Yes, Helene would be the luckiest baby in the universe. And if it was my job to lead, then I’d see to it that we made things better for her.
Now.
I saw Rohan and Canyon standing outside the medical facility as soon as I stepped outside.
“We weren’t trying to eavesdrop,” Rohan said immediately. “We were interested in the baby. We have no experience with babies.”
Canyon spoke next. “Her heartbeat is strong. Diana’s is too, but the actual sound of her brain, the waves of her neurotransmitters, altered immediately upon giving birth. We didn’t know that happened.”
I didn’t know brains made noise. How did these two and Sterling ever get any sleep? “I am not going to tell you what she didn’t say.”
“We don’t wish to know,” Rohan answered. “We are not interested in the secrets people wish to keep unless they are a threat. We just wanted you to know we are fascinated with this development, the possibility of time travel, and we would like to help if and when you decide to pursue this.”
I supposed that was fair. “Okay, I actually think that would be wonderful. Here is the thing; you two need to work on not listening when you haven’t been invited to do so, whether you want to or not. Like Sterling does.”
Canyon laughed. “You think he’s not listening? He’s worse than us.”
This place was a complicated mess.
I found Keith where I expected him to be: his bedroom. If he hadn’t been there, I’d have pinged his tablet. He’d moved several large tablets into the room, and he was drawing on them. My husband looked up when I came in. “Hey, babe. Listen, I’m in my head. This is exciting stuff I’m doing.”
“I know.”
And then using his tablet, I wrote the whole thing out so he could see it.
He read what I wrote very quickly. And then seemed to again. Keith flopped down on the bed. Thank goodness the bed was actually there. I didn’t know if he’d known that when he sat back like he did.
“We’re going to do this. It’s going to work.” He jumped up again. “This is why I love the stuff, Paloma. Taking what we think might be possible and doing it. This is what I’ve been missing. I mean, face it, I’ve pretty much been playing cleanup crew for the messes the three of them make.”
I’d never thought of him that way. “No, you’re not that. Not at all.”
“Well, it feels that way sometimes. This is what I do, Paloma. This is my stuff and it’s going to work. In the not too distant future. Otherwise she would have said he was old. I am going to do this. I mean, I’m sure there will be help. But I’m going to do it.”
I wrapped my arms around him. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”
“I don’t care now. I have you. I have this. Things… things are going to be wonderful.”
I would point out to him at another time that Jackson had not been in great circumstances when he’d appeared to Diana. Not now. Not when he thought, suddenly, that life might be great. I was going to leave him feeling this as long as possible. We should all be so lucky.
Keith Sandler
The ramifications of this blew me away. I wasn’t sure I could explain to Paloma just my level of excitement.
Time travel.
And I knew I had to have something to do with designing it. Wes made a scanner, and it hooked into a ship. Then a second one showed up. He didn’t know how that happened, but there were possibilities that didn’t involve time travel. Dual worlds theory… who knew with that black hole.
But… this was different. I was going to make time trav
el happen. I’d already done it… sort of. Jackson had been traveling without anything, and he was looking for the scanner and…
“Paloma, I need to get to Wes’s scanner.”
She nodded. “I know. But we can’t do that just this second. I don’t want to deny you this. There are ships landing, and I don’t know if it’s safe for us to do that right now. Jackson has to approve everyone through security first. I don’t want to do anything that might leak out until we are sure it’s safe.”
She had a point. Okay, I would wait. Needing to halt for a little bit wouldn’t diminish the truth of this. I had my girl, and I had my brothers… and I had time travel.
The possibilities of this were endless.
“The other bit, I mean I’m sure there’s a reason you wrote it, love, instead of said it.” I walked to the tablet and erased what she’d written. “Don’t worry too much about it. Now that we know what happened, sort of, we’ll be very careful to see that it’s okay.”
She nodded. But that didn’t mean she necessarily believed me. Paloma really wanted things to go well, and yet she’d seen too much now to really think they could. That was okay. I’d believe for both of us until she did.
15
Babies And Bombers
Paloma
Before I left Keith, I had to pose the question I’d given to Tommy. They all had to be on board, or this wasn’t going to work. I wouldn’t force anyone to raise a baby they didn’t want or have one of my husbands less invested in the child than the others. I wanted what it looked like Diana had, I wanted all of them totally in love with their new family member.
I would wait until everyone was on board. At some point, I’d probably have a frank discussion if the answer was still no. In any case, I was getting ahead of myself.
“Keith,” I said, kissing his chin, “I’d like to have a baby. What do you think?”
I saw the second I had his full attention. His eyes stopped darting to the tablet behind me, and he stared at me. “I say yes.” He took my hands. “Right now? Do you want to make a baby right now?”
I wished I could. I grinned at him. This was my Keith, so sweet. I put my arms back around him. “I have to ask Quinn and Clay first. Tommy also said yes. If everyone is a yes, I’ll turn off the chip and we’ll go from there. And Keith, about what you said before, how could you think you were the clean-up crew?”
He sighed. “Paloma, my skills haven’t really been on display. Since you’ve known me, I’ve basically been following Quinn around, trying to keep him in order. Gambling with him because he needed me.”
I shook my head. “Since I met you, you were keeping your brother afloat, designing dampeners that changed the light refraction on ships, saving my life—truthfully saving all our lives. At no time, Keith, did you seem anything but strong, amazing, loving, brilliant.”
He kissed my lips hard, and I wondered if it was to stop me from going on. None of my guys particularly liked to be complimented. I didn’t either, so I supposed we shared that in common.
“Thank you, my love. For your words. For thinking them. For saying them. For feeling that way.” He pressed our foreheads together. “Whether we have one child or we have eight.”
I gulped. That was a possibility. This idea I had where I had one child with each of them could result in twins each time. They ran in their family, obviously. If that happened, we might have to rethink things.
He continued speaking. “I want them to feel… normal.”
Now, that was a surprising statement. “Do you not?”
Keith shook his head, a piece of his blond hair falling in his eyes. He needed a haircut. “We were supposed to be strong. I guess we are. Just… I was a sensitive kid. I wanted to think about things. I wanted to do math, not pushups. And Dad was fine with that as long as I wasn’t bothering anyone and I was getting strong first.” He shook his head. “It has to be okay to be who you are, right? I mean truthfully, Tommy should always have been building ships or something else. He should never have devoted so much brainpower to learning to be General Sandler when he hated every second of it.”
This was the most I’d ever heard Keith speak on this subject. I touched his cheek, rubbing my hand down it. “They can be whatever they want to be in this universe. I mean, none of us get to be pacifists, I guess. But other than that.”
He snorted. “You’re right. They probably can’t be pacifists.”
“I love you. I’d stay here all day, but I have to make sure Tommy isn’t going to give in to pressure and go back to war.”
He cocked his head to the side. “I feel like you’ve left something out of that statement.”
“Keith, have you not been checking your tablet?” I had messaged him all of this.
He shook his head. “I decided to ignore current life and think about time travel. Sorry. Quinn and I aren’t so different from one another.”
I rubbed my forehead. “Good thing I love you both so much. I’ve got to get to Tommy. Come on. I’ll explain on the way.”
Clay, Quinn, and Tommy stood together as a huge crowd of people—I didn’t try to count; it might have been hundreds—seemed to be talking at once. I caught bits of conversations. The gist seemed to be they didn’t want Sandler making his way to Earth, they wanted to fight, and they wanted Captain Sandler to lead them. I leaned against the wall behind my husbands, Keith by my side.
I leaned forward. “Tommy, they don’t seem to know you’re a general. Captain is a step down. Should I tell them?”
I hoped he heard the amusement in my voice, although I doubted it, because all he did was grunt.
Quinn smiled and leaned back. “They’re really making a case, and I think our boy might be starting to think he has to do this.”
Of course he was. This was Tommy. He had been raised to believe the fate of the world rested on his shoulders—only then, the world had been Sandler Cartel. He’d simply reassigned the fate of the world and taken it back on. No, I was done with this.
I pushed forward through the crowd until I found what I was looking for. I was tinier than these guys. I needed a chair.
If Diana said I had to lead, then I’d lead. Scanning the room, I caught sight of Melissa and her husbands. I was sure they’d rather be with their new granddaughter than here. I’d rather be with Helene, too. But we all did what we had to do in times like these. Right now, it was my turn.
Okay, I’d see if I could manage this. I stood up on the chair. “Hello.” I waved my hands in the air. Truly, I had to look deranged. Tommy stepped forward, but Clay grabbed his arm, stopping him. I had to look away from my husbands. They were too distracting.
All of a sudden, my voice echoed around the room. “Hello,” I said again, and everyone shut up. How was I being projected? From the back of the room, Jackson waved at me. I grinned. Okay, I had support. I’d be grateful for it.
“My name is Paloma Sandler. How are you?” No one answered, and I tried again. “How are you?”
This time my question earned some shouts; they were mostly positive. Someone yelled ‘tired,’ and I appreciated the honesty. We were all tired. That was for sure.
“Some of you may have spoken to me during the battles. Or planning. I was on the Comm with General Sandler over there.” I pointed to Tommy. He shook his head, his eyes huge. Yep, my oldest husband had no idea what I was doing, and that was okay, because I really didn’t either.
I was leading. Or something. “The galaxy is pretty awful, isn’t it? Whatever motivated you to come here today, it must be pretty important. Maybe you’re afraid Garrison Sandler wants to take over Earth. You’re right to fear my father-in-law. He’s a sick asshole.”
There were laughs and some gasps at what I said. I kept going. Now that I was doing this, I had clarity. I actually knew what I need to say and what I wanted to happen. “Trust me, maybe a lot of people don’t care for their in-laws. I really, really don’t like mine.”
This earned me a lot of laughs. Diana had been right. I was goo
d at this. And this would not have worked for her. I had been raised to do this, sort of. No one would have thought I was going to be leading any kind of military organization, but they had wanted me to be comfortable in all crowds. Sure of myself. Or at least able to pretend I was.
All I needed was my Sandler wife outfit, and I’d be set. Next time, I’d have on something red.
“Maybe you’re here because Sandler already took your home. You fled to Earth, and now that’s not even safe.” I shook my head. Where was Trenton? I found him finally in the crowd. “Maybe you have lost everything.”
Only once, when I’d walked into the room dressed to kill at the meeting on Earth, had I held so much rapt attention on me. Then, my purpose hadn’t been to talk. This was different.
“Let me tell you something.” I put my hands on my hips, hoping I didn’t fall off the chair. “As bad as we all find my father-in-law, Sandler Cartel beats the heck out of Evander Corporation that’s coming through the black hole in droves. They scare me to no end.” I’d never said that aloud before. “At least I know what my father-in-law’s end game is. Evander? They experiment on people. They kill off planets. They may have made zombies. I don’t know. They’re here. And they want this side of the galaxy.”
The room was so silent goosebumps broke out on my arms from the sheer quietness of it. I rubbed them away. “I had some time when I was sitting in a space where I could barely stand up, alone for most of the days and nights, to think about things. Is Sandler as good as it gets? Do we have to support that man, whose only redeeming quality is the children he fathered, because Evander is so much worse?” I shook my head. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not satisfied with that. I want free planets, open elections, self-determination. I want to know that if things are not one hundred percent fair, then they are at least better than this.”