HeartStorm (HeartFast Series Book 3) (27 page)

            Julan gave her husband a hug, then released him to walk back to the side of the crib. "Poor child. You know your mumsie and dahdee are gone, don't you? But he'll return soon to get you and take you home." She started to reach out and tuck the thin quilt around the infant, then thought better. This was one of those rare moments when the baby wasn't squalling at the top of her lungs, and no one and nothing could calm her until she cried herself into an exhausted sleep. Leaving the child's side, she left the room. Porith followed her into the corridor.

            "Omie, that baby isn't going to live much longer. You know it, and I know it." Tears glistened in the woman's eyes. "It breaks my heart, seeing her suffer like that."

            He could see how weary his wife was as she wiped her face with the hem of her tunic, and he gave her a loving pat on the shoulder. "You're about to collapse, Jul. Go to bed and get what sleep you can. You never know when she'll awaken."

            Julan nodded. "You're right. What about you? Are you through for the evening?"

            "Not yet, but soon. Go. I'll join you shortly."

            "Have you any idea yet when that storm will abate so we can go topside again? I'm sick of having to stay cramped up in this bunker."

            "The moment I see the storm's passed, I promise I'll let you know," he told her.

            Nodding again, the woman turned to continue down the hallway. He watched her until she turned the corner to head for their bedroom. Satisfied, he returned to his study and his bank of security vids.

            So far, nothing. On one hand, he was glad the board was clean. But on the other hand, the lack of anything happening did nothing to ease the tension and strain that now filled him with almost constant dread and anticipation.

            Porith poured himself a drink from the wet bar. Turning around, he leaned against the cobalt shelf and took a sip of the fiery liquid.

            "What now, old boy? Admit it. Julan's right. That baby isn't going to live much longer. Then what?"

            He could see himself reflected in the large monitor hanging nearby. It showed the above ground compound in a sweeping three-hundred-sixty degree arc. Against the backdrop of the night sky, his reflection appeared composed and poised. Yet Porith knew he was everything but.

            "I thought I had it all figured out," he murmured. He had a habit of conversing with himself. Talking out the fine points. Discussing the pros and cons. He could think better that way when he heard the details spoken out loud.

            "I thought, hell, why not take the baby? It would be easier to keep. Easier to guard. Easier to hide if the time came." He chuckled. "If? More likely
when
the time comes? Because they'll come for her. Eventually. They'll find me and this place. It may not be today, or tomorrow, or years from now. But I know the Guardians will find me. One of these days. And when they do, they'll charge me with the deaths of all those people on Synaria. And with the death of that baby girl."

            His glass was empty. He reached over for the bottle to refill it.

            "The one thing I didn't count on was for Julan to fall in love with the child," he admitted ruefully. At the thought of that tiny infant, regardless of its incessant wailing, he knew he'd also grown attached to the baby. "Jul, I always regretted the fact that we couldn't have children of our own. Or that we'd be denied adopting one through the Handfast, although I tried to circumvent those rules. Gods know I paid enough creds to paper this entire planet."

            Taking another large swallow, he overcompensated, and some of the drink went down his windpipe. Porith coughed hard to clear his airway, then refreshed his glass. Meanwhile, the monitor board remained dark. No lights flashed. No warning sirens disturbed the soft whisper of air circulating through the vents.

            "Another week, and I'll tell Jul that DiMackerlyn's wife took a turn for the worse, and the baby needs to remain with us a bit longer. You'll like that, won't you, dearest? Of course, that's assuming the baby survives."

            He took a deep breath. Grabbing the bottle, he walked over to his desk and sat down in the chair. Propping the bottle in front of him, he leaned back, his eyes scanning each vid for some sign, any sign, of an unwanted visitor. Or visitors.

            "Yeah, I knew the risks. I knew all of the risks, including getting involved in that agreement to have the Ombitra attack Synaria. Thank the gods, those creatures gave me an excellent excuse not to return. Julan never questioned me about my decision to stay here, once I allowed her to see the remote news regarding the attack. She thinks Synaria is destroyed, and I plan on her never knowing the truth."

            The bottle was less than half-full. Before too long, he would have to think about going to the supplies bunker to fetch another liter.

            He frowned. "Fuck StarLight. She ruined it. She ruined everything, the Ombitra's plan on domination, everything. Well, whore, I have your baby, thanks to your greedy, unloving father. And he can't help you find her, even if you have him interrogated by that mind reading slut at Guardian Command. Yes, I slipped up and gave him my real name. I had to, or else he wouldn't have believed me or accepted my offer. Or risked his neck. But it didn't matter in the long run. He doesn't know where I am. He knows nothing else about me, other than my name, and who would believe him, anyway? Didn't you hear the news? Didn't you read the obituaries? I died in the attack. The Porith he presumably met probably used my name as an alias. There's no way an honored and respected tribunal judge would put out a contract on one of the Guardians."

            Porith chuckled. "Poor crag hole. Poor stupid crag hole, DiMackerlyn. I knew the Guardians would get you. Hells, you're StarLight's father. How poetic was that, to have you kidnap your own granddaughter and sell her to me? First your own daughter, your only child. Then your granddaughter, your only grandchild. You were given the gift of natural fatherhood, when there are scores of people praying to be blessed with offspring. You sick, twisted son of a bitch. Your wife probably died because of what you did, or maybe because of what you did to her. You probably treated her with the same disregard as you did your daughter, didn't you, you bastard? In my opinion, you deserve every ounce of misery they deal you, and then some."

            The last of that bottle of four-hundred-eighty-year-old Barbunisk liquor dribbled into his glass. Porith dropped the empty container onto the floor. "But StarLight...ahh, you've presented me with a most interesting set of problems, haven't you? If you hadn't intervened, the Ombitra would have succeeded in destroying Synaria. I would have returned to help rebuild that world, and become one of its greatest heroes, and richer beyond anyone's dreams. Yet, you stopped them. I don't how, but you did, just as Clearlian said you could. And you survived. And now Julan and I can never show our faces anywhere again for fear of the Guardians discovering my involvement, if they don't already know."

            His eyes glanced over to the monitor, which continued to show nothing but another calm evening and star-filled skies. "Until that day you find me, my wife and I will enjoy the presence of our new little girl. The child we never had. The baby DiMackerlyn sold to us. I told Julan he was an old business associate. That he'd dropped her off for us to care for, as a favor to him, until he could return. Of course, he never will, but she bought the story because she was already enamored of the child."

            He twirled the glass, making the last swallow swirl inside. "I don't care what it takes, or how much it costs, I'll find a way to make sure the child survives. In the time we have with her, she'll grow up knowing only me and Julan as her father and mother. She'll love only us."

            His hand automatically reached for the bottle, then remembered he'd finished it. Sighing loudly, he got up from his chair, when the ground began to tremble. The trembling swiftly grew in intensity, until the room and everything within it shook violently. A heartbeat later, he was thrown off his feet and into the wall of monitors.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Retribution

            Porith grabbed for the door, missed, and fell against the wall as the room tilted. His heavy desk slammed into the wall beside him, narrowly missing him, but several monitors skidded across the floor and landed on top of him.

            His mind screamed
earthquake!
, but he also knew there was no way this was being caused by any natural phenomena. This little planet was not built around a geothermic core. There were no internal pockets of molten lava or heated gas to force the earth to shift.

            Which meant there had to be another explanation. A more reasonable explanation.

            A monitor slid past him. His eyes caught sight of a trio of people running for the rear of the compound before the screen blacked out. But he'd seen, and now he understood.

           
Guardians!

           
The room shuddered again. Porith got the impression he was being dragged upward. In the next instant, his mind clicked, and he knew the answer. The bunker was made of high-density metal, and there was only one Guardian he knew of who was powerful enough to pull it up, through meters of dirt, to the planet's surface.

            "Come on, slut! Hurry up! Get me topside!" he yelled, unable to move until everything stilled.

            He smiled. Yes, they could bring the bunker to ground level, but they would need nothing short of a megaton bomb to even dent the exterior. And if by chance they did manage to get inside, they didn't know the layout of the place. By the time they meandered around this maze of corridors that were so narrow people had to walk single-file, he would have the baby and be heading for the landing bay before they had any idea of where he was.

            The room continued to rise slowly but inexorably upward. Between yanks, Porith crawled on hands and knees over equipment and around furniture. At one point, his left hand went out from under him, and he nearly fell onto his stomach. A glance down revealed the pistol he normally kept in his desk drawer up top. He'd brought it down with him when he and Julan had evacuated the house. Grabbing it, he shoved the weapon into his pocket, then continued toward the doorway, praying it wasn't jammed. By some miracle the lights remained on. Apparently the leads which fed solar power from the sun into the compound and down to the bunker remained viable, but he didn't expect them to remain that way. Sooner or later the place would go dark, which wouldn't present that much of a problem for him. He knew every meter of this place blind.

            No, at the moment, he had only one concern, and that was getting to the baby.

            There was a final huge swelling as the entire bunker cleared the ground and was placed on the surface. Now right side up, Porith slammed the emergency release on the door, and the portal reluctantly slid open. Not far, but enough to allow him to wriggle through.

            Distantly, the sound of a loud boom filtered to him. At the same instant, the security alarms went off. He glanced back at the ruined monitors and board which would turn off the jarring noise, but decided not to bother. With luck, the bombardment would help cover his tracks.

            Faintly, Porith wondered how his wife was fairing. Whether she'd been injured. A brief moment of regret swept through him. No sense getting her any further involved. She was a strong and resilient woman. She'd manage to find help. Maybe the Guardians would offer to assist her off-planet and to a medical clinic if she needed to. Right now, however, he had a more pressing agenda.

            The door to the nursery was more obstinate in opening. It took him several hard shoves to get the panel open enough to get inside. As he expected, the baby was awake and screaming with fear or hunger, or both. The few pieces of furniture within the room had been scattered, but the crib remained upright and stable on its gyros. He tracked the child's whereabouts from her cries, which were nearly loud enough to drown out the cacophony coming from the tripped alarms. Grabbing the infant, he hurried back into the corridor and ran for the landing bay.

            The explosive sounds grew closer. Before he reached the tube that would lead him to the escape ship, a gust of wind roared through the hallway, and he knew the bunker had been breached. How, he couldn't begin to fathom. But the Guardians were in, and they were looking for him.

            "No. They're looking for the baby. That will be their first priority. I will be their second."

            He found the tube, but the plasticine corridor had twisted into a knot during the bunker's ascent to the surface, permanently blocking that route. Undaunted, Porith readjusted his grip on the baby and backtracked until he reach the auxiliary route to the bay. He'd barely started down the corridor when everything went dark.

            And silent.

            Deathly silent.

            Someone had killed the claxons and bells, as well as the lights. No more power was feeding into the structure.

            The bunker creaked ominously as the walls began to buckle, and he realized he'd made a major error in its construction. His detailed, finely thought-out plans had been made to construct an underground refuge that would withstand anything this planet could throw at it. But that was the catch. It was built to be underground, not above it. The reinforced outer structure was meant to be buffered by dirt and rock and gravel. With that gone, the seals were vulnerable.

            The baby's cries lessened, and it gasped for air. "Hold on, little one," he whispered. "We're almost there."

            With one hand out to the side to keep track of each doorway and intersecting corridor he passed, Porith counted in his head until he reached the one he sought. This time, however, the panel refused to budge.