Learning to Blush (22 page)

The admiral swallowed. “Your mate?” he echoed, amazed.

Thorton gave a singular, firm nod. He looked down and noticed Penny giving a worried grin to Jack, as if she was feeling too awkward to say 'hello'. “There’s no time for introductions. Do you have a ship? I want to get her someplace safe. If Ellie’s been captured—”

“I haven’t heard anything about humans for sale coming out from this planet …” the admiral said, shaking his head.

“Well, they must be for sale
somewhere
! They've been nabbed, they must have been! Where else could they…” Thorton stopped mid-sentence. They could be—
could be
—doing something very stupid…

“Why won't this day end?” Thorton moaned, feeling a strong headache coming on.

Thorton closed his eyes and shook his head, hoping he was wrong. Hoping that they could not have possibly been stupid enough to go and try to rescue Graham. Surely, one of them had to have enough brains to protest such a ridiculous move.

But then he remembered—they were Jonases. There wasn't a scrap of sense between them.

Shit.

* * *

“So, how is it we’re all still alive?” Mike asked Ellie.

They were all caked with mud. Since narrowly escaping being captured by huge, brutish goons of Alamar Lee the other day at their ship, they had been trying to locate Graham. It was easy enough to discover that Graham was in a holding cell in Alamar’s compound, awaiting Frians to pick him up and bring him to a Frian federation planet for a public execution.

As soon as word of this trickled into the ear of Ellie and the Jonas boys, there was no resting for any of them until Graham was safe. They weren’t warriors, but they knew how to pick locks and sneak in places. With blaster guns still holstered to their hips to give them confidence moreso than actual protection, they had devised a haphazard plan to sneak into the compound and grab Graham back.

Their plan didn't include them crawling on their bellies in the middle of a training yard filled with oil-drums trying to avoid the notice of very, very scary men that seemed to be everywhere with very, very scary guns in their hands. But that's what had happened.

“Because we ain’t nothing if we ain’t lucky,” Tim responded on Ellie’s behalf, trying to catch his breath.

“We must be stupid,” Mike grumbled. “This was a stupid idea. Might have worked if there were only
five
goons, but I’ve counted
forty-five
!”

“I know,” Tom replied. “Told you guys it was dumb, but nobody listens to me. It’s like you guys just let me hang around you because of my pretty face.” He looked around. “We’re sort of surrounded on all sides right now.”

“Sort of?”

Tom shrugged. “No, I just said ‘sort of’ because I don’t want to freak myself out. We’re all gonna die.” He said this so nonchalantly that Ellie was unsure if she’d heard him right. “We’re either gonna have to start praying for a miracle or start surrendering. I'd prefer to just get taken to prison or sold into slavery than get shot in the face, which is what's gonna happen. I think we really underestimated how many people were on this Alamar-alien-guy's payroll…”

“Seriously! It’s like the whole
planet
works for him,” Tim huffed. He tried to rub a gob of mud off his nose but it merely smeared over to his cheek. “This is so heinous.”

“Look, I’m not going to let my husband die,” Ellie declared. “I love him. I’m not leaving, I’m not surrendering. Period. That’s not what a Masterson does.”

“You’re not a
Masterson
, Ellie. You’re one of us,” Mike said, looking slightly hurt.

“No; today I’m not. I’d start praying if I were you,” she warned. “'Cause I’m getting Graham.” She took a deep breath and launched herself quickly towards the compound, keeping low.

Worried, Tim couldn’t help but inform Tom that Ellie seemed to have chosen ‘option one’—the praying option.

It didn’t look good for the Jonas clan, not at all! Mike had even begun to remember that, despite what Tim liked to believe, none of them was ever considered “lucky” by any stretch of the imagination.

That’s why it was so astounding that what happened next
was
so damn lucky.

Well, what happened wasn’t lucky for Alamar or his men… Just when a goon had caught sight of the little figure of Ellie zooming towards the main building in the compound with a large blaster closed tightly in her little hands and looking very much like a circus-trained squirrel, he was shot in the head before he could sound the alarm.

“Wha!” Another man fell off the tower, this one was still alive enough to scream before he met his end at the ground-level. A blaster shot seemed to come out of nowhere!

Ellie whirled her head up and around as everything was thrown into chaos. Suddenly, it seemed like she wasn’t just trying not to be seen; she was also trying not to get hit by a stray blaster shot! The blaster fire overhead had her hiding behind an oil drum, separated from her family, her face in the dirt, her hands over her head, and her ass practically in the air.

She was too afraid to move, now. It was too much, too noisy, and there were too many men screaming.

Suddenly a large hand grabbed her upper arm and tucked her to a broad chest while a familiar voice gritted, “You stupid little brat!”

“Thorton!” She nearly managed to add,
“My hero!”
but she didn’t feel that funny. She was too busy being startled and sick to her stomach. “Where’d you go? You’ve been gone three da—!”

Her lecture was cut quite short, because Thorton spun her around, aimed the gigantic gun held to the shoulder of his other arm, and fired. The noise that the massive gun was able to emit made her clap her hands over her ears, screaming like a two-year-old waking up from her first nightmare.

Thorton jerked her again and looped his arm around her chest to press her back tightly to his chest. Her feet dangled several inches off the ground as he spun his body around to harness his weapon and use it. BLAM! BLAM!
BLAM
!

She watched as Thorton just blew people
away
. It wasn’t just that; he did it in a way that would have made Arnold Schwarzenegger feel like he needed to change his
tampon
.

She dangled from his tight embrace like a stunned fish until he released her and she crumpled to the ground, coming face-to-face with Mike’s shoe-laces. Somehow, Thorton had carried her back to her family!

“I am going to kick all of your asses when we get home, you know that?” Thorton boomed, his voice scarier than his gun. Ellie and the boys just stared at him, terrified. Then they stared at his gun, becoming even more terrified. There was something about that weapon that made the blasters in their hands look like water-guns. “Mike—my boot’s going so far up your ass, you’re gonna taste
leather
!”

“Who’s
that
guy?” Tim asked him, pointing over the wall, where he had been viewing the festivities.

Ellie looked around the edge of the wall just long enough to catch an eye full of what Tim was talking about. She was so completely consumed with what Thorton had been doing, she hadn’t seen her father-in-law make an appearance with two smoking blasters in his hands as he dived in and around one place and then the other, shooting and smoothly avoiding being shot. “
Shu
!”

It was what she had been calling Jack; before it had been a joke—'Shu' was the Swarii word for ‘Daddy’ or ‘Poppa’. Today it wasn't said as a joke; it fell off her lips with a violent mixture of surprise, worry, and relief.

Jack turned and they made eye contact. His eyes lit up for a moment, hardened in the next, and Thorton pulled Ellie away from the edge of the wall before she could see anything else. “
Shu
’s gonna get hurt!” she snapped, turning to Thorton.

“Shut up and keep your arms over your head and keep your head
low
. If you can see them, they can see
you
. You wait right here.”

“I can help!” she said, but she wished she hadn’t. Thorton turned his neck and gave her a look that could kill.

She slowly put her arms over her head and put her head towards the ground like she was told.

“I’ll be back.
Don’t move
.” He turned to the boys and added, poking his finger threateningly at them, “And I mean you boneheads, too!
Listen
this time! Don’t move a muscle. Don’t even help. And I’m
so
serious about the ass-whooping.”

The boys watched him go back out onto the proverbial ‘battle field’, their eyes and mouths wide open.

Mike finally turned around. “Okay, I think I just peed myself a little. Hopefully he wasn’t serious about the ass-whooping. He might actually do it. I might let him—I can’t
fight
that! He’s like a—a—James Bond or something! Only bad-ass!”

“James Bond is bad-ass,” Tim reminded. Mike turned and raised his red-orange eyebrow, and Tim shrugged, conceding slightly. “Well, not in comparison to THAT, no. But just because he was out-cocked doesn’t mean you should throw out 007’s past accomplishments!”

The boys cringed with their eyes shut and their hands over their ears as more gunshots and screams rung through the air.

They didn’t move when there was silence, and Ellie was quite shocked when suddenly two hands pulled her out of the mud she was crouched in and pulled her onto a strong, bending knee. Kisses rained down upon her cheeks and forehead before she was crushed to her father-in-law’s chest, where he was still catching his breath. “I love you,” he told her, “even though you’re pressing me into an early grave by giving me a heart condition.”

There was something in his voice—almost like he was getting choked up, that made Ellie feel just…
horrible
. Somehow, she’d never really thought of how Jack would react to any and all of what had happened and what she’d done.

She'd forgotten that the man had already lost everything—four daughters and his wife! He had surely thought Ellie was dead, and he had surely thought Graham would kill himself when her death had been verified back on Earth… Jack had already once divulged that he looked on her like his own flesh-and-blood, and she had repaid him by giving him heart-stopping worry at every turn rather than obedience or grandchildren, which is all he'd ever asked her for.

It struck her that she was a terrible person, and for some reason, he was still kissing her with relief rather than slapping her, which is surely what she deserved. “
I’m so sorry
!” she cried in Swarii, feeling choked up herself. She sniffled; she was quickly amassing tears. “
I’m sorry,
Poppa
!
I really am!
”

Eventually he released her from his hold and gave her hair one last pet before he broke into orders. “C’mon, we need to find Graham. Stay close and behind me. These are your kin? Tell them to get behind me.”

She didn’t have to—they weren’t fluent in Swarii, but they knew
that much
, and they were poised to accept instructions.

She clasped tightly onto Jack’s large hand as he tugged them through the yard in the middle of the compound and cautiously into the main building.

“
Where is he?
” they heard a distant voice growl.

“I-in the basement! Look, I didn’t mean anything personal. If you’re still angry about that thing that happened thirteen years ago… It was just a toe, that’s all!” a voice stammered nervously from nearby. “I had a business to run! I had to get my money somehow.”

“Scaring the shit out of an eighteen-year-old greenhorn and capturing his cousin to sell him for torture are two different things. You should have stopped at loan-sharking, Alamar.”

“Wait, I can make it worth your whi—” What horrible last words! But they were, indeed, Alamar Lee’s last, because the only person that stepped into the hallway afterwards was Thorton, who was cleaning off his knife before he tucked it back into his boot.

Thorton looked at Ellie, pursed his lips with annoyance, and then looked up at Jack. “Yard’s clear?”

“Finally,” Jack confirmed with a nod.

They both looked around for the path to the basement until they decided wordlessly on a direction. Jack gave Ellie’s hand a firm yank that caused her to keep up with his pace. She knew he was very upset with her, like a parent who had lost their child at a fair all day… Only multiplied by four
months
…

At the bottom of the stairs, Jack stood her up against the wall, and then waved to the boys. “I want you all to stay right there. If someone walks by, I want you to shoot them. I don’t want you to move. We’re coming right back.”

With that, they disappeared down the hallway. “So,” Mike said, watching Jack and Thorton jogging down the hallway until they took a turn and disappeared from sight. “How does it happen that we chicken-shit out of a plan and then get shown up quite so badly?”

“Well, it was never our plan to kill them, just outsmart them,” Tom reminded. After a moment of thought, he admitted, “That might have been the problem with our plan. But we couldn’t have just stood by and done
nothing,
either.” He turned to Ellie, who was already looking very sorry for herself. “That was the Admiral, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” she replied quietly.

“The admiral of the whole fleet?” he asked, and they heard gunfire from down the hall.

“Yeah.”

“Like the most important person to the Swarii aside from the Emperor himself?”

She pursed her lips together. “Well, some would say…” She sighed. “Yeah.”

“He’s a bad ass,” Tim added with a nod. “I hope I’m still kicking ass when I’m his age. I used to hope I’d grow up to be Sean Connery. Now I hope to grow up and be
that guy
.”

“I think Tim’s in love,” Mike teased, smirking, and elbowing Ellie in a way that suggested he hoped she’d laugh at his joke.

There was no laughing left in her, no cheering her up. She was certain she’d never laugh again.

It seemed like she waited there at the bottom of the stairway for a lifetime. Every moment of waiting became more and more grueling until they heard footsteps coming back towards them. Mike raised his blaster like he planned to take a shot, but three people turned the corner—the one in the middle being hoisted up by the other two.