The Spiral Path (7 page)

“We have to leave before Mitch and the other Terrans destabilize much more.”

With a nod from Sabine, several medics left the room with just two remaining to stabilize the Chimeran woman on the bed.

Her mother stepped forward and looked over the Chimeran woman with wide eyes. “There will be no more Trans-D travel until we figure out what happened to the
Bayne.
”

Lara clenched a fistful of Mitch’s uniform. “What happened to the
Bayne
was you gave the go order before upgrades were complete. People died because of that hasty decision.”

“Regardless, Trans-D travel is suspended.”

Mitch pulled himself up to sitting. “You can’t hold Terran citizens here, Prime Minister.”

Lara stood up. “I’m not a citizen of Creed and I will not allow you to hold the
Gryphon
here against our will. You’re sentencing the Terrans to death. Is that what you want?”

“What I want is my son back. And I don’t want my daughter throwing herself into needless danger either. What if the Revenant attack? I have to think of the rest of the lives on Creed.”

“You can’t hold us here.”

“Watch me.”

“I forbid you to go.” Sabine met Lara’s stare straight on.

Lara wrestled down a roiling nausea. “You’re asking me to sentence Mitch to death.” A whirlwind of fear and anger churned inside her and demanded that she whisk Mitch off Creed right now. To safety, away from this place that was breaking him to pieces.

She followed Sabine’s gaze as it drifted to the closed door of the private hospital room. Beyond it Mitch lay in the dark, his muscles probably painfully convulsing with phase fluctuations. In about a day his molecules would lose cohesion entirely. Meanwhile, she was arguing with her mother like the petulant teenager she used to be.

Lara squared her shoulders and swept a glance over the empty corridor. “We’re leaving for Alpha Haven in a matter of hours, with or without your approval.”

“Do you want me to beg?” Sabine clutched Lara’s hand. “Get down on my knees right now? I’ll do it.”

Lara stepped back and wrenched her hand free. She’d never seen her mother so desperate. “No, I don’t want you to—”

“Rafael might already be dead, Lara. I—I don’t want to think about that any more than you do, but if saying it out loud scares you into staying here safe with me, I’ll do it. I can’t protect you if you leave.”

Lara squeezed her eyes shut.
No, no, no.
“Rafael is not dead. I would know it.” She slapped her palm on her heart. “I would feel it.”

She backed away from her mother and sidled up to Mitch’s door. There would be a new emptiness inside if her twin were truly gone. No matter how much time, space or dimension separated her from Rafael and Mitch, the family bonds they created while at the Academy still held. During her short time at school, the shuffling between her parents’ worlds had ceased. The revolving chaos of her life had stopped with Mitch at its axis, the eye of the storm.

“It won’t work, Lara.” Her mother pointed at the hospital room. “Whatever this thing is you’re doing with Commodore Yoshida won’t work, just like last time.”

Lara’s heart cracked right down the center. “You want him to die.”

“I most certainly do not want the Commodore to die, but he let you go once, my dear. He’ll do it again.”

Lara’s breath shortened and she swallowed a curse. That Star Union edict had indeed derailed all her plans and ruined her life. She still mourned what could have been, but it was time for the truth. When she finally spoke, her voice sounded raw. “I pushed him away, Mother. I didn’t want a lifetime separated like you and dad lived.”

Sabine’s chin lifted. “You had the best of both worlds.”

“I had no home. We could all never live together as a family. I’ve never even shared a meal with the both of you.”

Her mother’s expression fell and the corridor quieted except for the rhythm of the waves outside. After a few moments Sabine pulled back her shoulders and gathered her wrap. Her clear aqua gaze pierced Lara from across the hall. “We did the best we could,
a grai.
”

Lara blinked away unshed tears and nodded. “I know.”

“I still just can’t let you go into Trans-D space. Whatever has captured Rafael might come here. I have to protect all of Creed even if I can’t protect my own children.”

“And I can’t stay here, Mother. I won’t. It’s not just Mitch. The
Interlace
Terrans can’t live here indefinitely either.”

Sabine sighed. “Will you at least delay one more day? We can meet with Mitch in the morning. As the Terran envoy, he deserves to be part of this decision.”

Arms folded in front of her, Lara broke eye contact. “We’re running out of time.”

“Please, Lara.”

If this were anyone else but her mother… She nodded. “Fine.”

With a murmur of thanks, Sabine departed, leaving Lara more alone than she’d been that first cold night after leaving the Star Union behind.

The wrist-sync’s interface glowed green in the dark. Mitch held the device up and watched the light blink double time every few seconds as it rebalanced the phase difference with its environment.

I pushed him away.
Lara’s words to her mother in the corridor echoed in his mind, the sharp edges slicing away at him. He really shouldn’t be surprised. Lara might have pushed him away, but he let her go. Both of them had been equally daunted by what their future might have held. He’d been a coward, a fact that had ached every day since.

The spasms rolled over him again and he clutched the wrist-sync. The tremors began with a sharp pain in the gut that doubled him over. Joints contracted and crunched as if full of glass shards. Mitch’s stomach roiled, and only with panting did he keep down dinner. He crammed his eyes closed and waited for the seizure to pass.

Enough. Judging by the argument outside, he would probably fade to oblivion before those two found a compromise. He knew what had to be done.

Tuning the wrist-sync to the frequency Rafe used in his experiment might kill him, but so would doing nothing. Time had finally run out. The right spin value had been burned into Mitch’s mind from the moment Rafe transmitted it right before the
Interlace
disappeared. The experiment had worked for a few seconds at least before everything went to Hellas. Of course, now, Lara would need to be told and she would hate him for it. If this worked, at least he would be alive and could try to change her mind.

Mitch’s damp fingers slipped on the tiny keys and his hands shook, but he let out a sigh when the green light blinked speedily again, finally. Before he could put the damn thing on his wrist, though, muscles seized again and nausea churned.

The device fell to the floor.

Lara pushed away from the corridor wall but refused to watch her mother march away. A decade ago she’d decided not to live under someone else’s rules and wasn’t about to start now—even if those rules were her mother’s. Besides, she had a plan to get them all back to Alpha Haven and soon.

As she entered Mitch’s dark room, something clattered to the floor and the man groaned.

“Mitch?” Her voice wobbled and her heart fluttered. They had to have enough time for her plan. They just had to. Lara wasn’t ready to say goodbye to this man yet.

Mitch cleared his throat. “The wrist-sync. Hand it to me?”

Lara picked up the device and helped him wrap it around his clammy wrist. “What are you doing?”

The device’s interface lit up, rebooted and stabilized Mitch’s phase. What the—

Mitch sighed and his whole body loosened in the bed, his face still in shadow. “I thought I’d try. What did I have to lose?”

“It shouldn’t be working for you. The wrist-syncs only work for Chimerans.”

“I tinkered with it. Figured I couldn’t be worse off.”

Sadness welled up as a lump in Lara’s throat, and her eyes burned with unshed tears. They had wasted so much time and now might not have any left. Her mother wanted to take those remaining moments away, all to protect her.

Lara clenched her jaw and crossed the room to the things she’d brought with her last night. The hospital room’s couch wasn’t the most comfortable, but she’d slept in worse conditions.

Mitch cleared his throat. “So what’s your plan? I know you must have one.”

She shrugged. “Of course I do.”

He clicked on the bedside lamp. Its warm glow cast shadows on the rigid planes of his bare chest. “Aren’t you feeling like you’ve done this before?”

Lara paused in cramming the last of her clothes into the duffel bag. His skin looked ashen and she swore that, despite the wrist-sync, every few minutes his body shifted phase just a little bit more.

“You mean like when I left the Star Union?” There, she said it. Did Mitch think she wouldn’t own up to her actions?

Leaving the Union was one of the best decisions Lara had ever made. She gave up a lot, left her whole life behind. But the new life she built was better, wasn’t it? Ninety percent of the time she’d say yes.

Mitch nodded. “In the middle of the night no less. We had dinner and the next day you were gone.”

Lara zippered the bag. “We had a huge argument at dinner. I don’t have to explain myself to you or anybody.”

“No, you don’t have to, but I’m asking you to.”

She sighed and sank down on the couch. “What do you want me to tell you? That every day without you has seemed hollow?”

He laughed, dry and ironic. “I know you better than that, even after all this time.”

Lara checked the charge on her plasma gun and holstered the weapon in her belt. Using it would not just injure someone, but could irreparably damage Creed relations. Plus, if she used the wrist-sync, she’d have to re-sync for the weapon to have any impact.

They needed to set her plan in motion. Lara could end this conversation right now, say something nasty to change the direction of Mitch’s thoughts. Over the years she’d found she could bulldoze most people and get them to do what she wanted. It was how she’d built two thriving colonies from nothing. Sometimes the way people listened to her scared her.

Except Mitch was the one person who never succumbed. The one person who never allowed himself to be bulldozed.

Lara raised her chin. “I asked you to come with me.”

Mitch leaned forward, elbows on his knees and hands clasped together. “I didn’t realize you were leaving that night. I underestimated you. Believe me, it won’t happen again. I thought I still had time to convince you to stay—you did believe in the Union then, didn’t you?”

Lara nodded. “I wanted to serve it, Mitch, and be valued for my contributions too. Not just exploited for my talents. There’s a difference.”

“We could have made that difference together. I would have come around to the problem, maybe even gone with you.”

“How was I supposed to know that? At the time you seemed pretty intractable in your opinions. We both did. And I didn’t want to live the kind of life my parents had.”

Mitch nodded and stood, his body supple in black workout pants and bare feet. “True.” His color warmed as she watched.

Lara’s commlink pinged and she glanced down at the interface. “It’s Rossa.”

Mitch’s face closed up. Apparently, he’d had enough for now of sorting through their past. He checked the wrist-sync. “You sure this plan of yours will work?”

“It has to work. You should know, though, that my plan isn’t very ‘by the book.’”

Mitch stepped closer. An inch more and his bare chest would brush against her breasts. She pressed her palm over the strong beat of his heart and the outside world slid away from them. They stood in the quiet before the storm.

He pitched his voice low. “I’m not so ‘by the book’ anymore, Lara. I want to continue this conversation. We need to hash this out once and for all.”

“Let’s concentrate on getting the
Gryphon
and
Interlace
crews back to Terran space first, all right?”

Mitch nodded.

“How are you feeling?”

He smiled, a real one that crinkled around his eyes. “I feel great, actually. Better than I have since we arrived.” He flipped his other wrist over. The patch had darkened considerably. Nearly no green remained.

Lara’s commlink beeped again. “Rossa is waiting, but first—”

“First…” Mitch wrapped an arm around her waist. “First, tell me about this plan, Captain.”

Mitch clenched a fist. His strength had been returning in the hours since switching the wrist-sync’s phase frequency. However, his vision clouded up every so often, as if he’d just woken up from a long sleep. His muscles had spasmed hardly at all in the last hour, and the nausea had left him. He felt strong. Grounded.

Except he couldn’t shake the sense that someone watched him, even alone as he was in the hospital room.

Out the portal window, Creed’s sun painted the sky in the soft shades of sunrise. He’d made it through the night. Maybe he could yet make it all the way to Alpha Haven, if Lara’s plan worked.

“You can convince her to stay. If you ask, Lara will stay here on Creed.”

In the doorway, Sabine’s elegant posture held her chin up, but even such regal bearing couldn’t hide the dark circles under her eyes. Defense Minister Kade leaned on the doorjamb a few steps behind and mirrored her determination with the set of his jaw. Phase one of the plan had just unfurled as expected, and neither of them had any idea about their part in it.

Mitch’s lips pulled up in a small smile. “No one can convince Lara to do something she’s already decided against.”

The prime minister set her shoulders back. “You really are a coward.”

Mitch narrowed his eyes. “Tell me, Madam Osai.” He lifted his shirt from the bed and put it on. “When the Star Union issued its edict about the Chimerans, were you secretly happy? You weren’t prime minister then, but as the mother of the Chimeran leader, I’m sure you were apprised of the situation. Creed had its own edict waiting, didn’t it?”

Kade pushed away from the door. “Now, Commodore, how dare you—”

Mitch held up a hand. “I’ve heard the rumors. You stalled the Creed ultimatum and expected the Star Union edict to push Lara back to you. Creed ruined that plan when it declared the Chimerans special weapons against Terra and your daughter fled.”

“I am trying to protect my family and my people, Commodore. Unlike you, I don’t shirk my responsibilities.”

“I may have stubbornly avoided you all these years, madam, but I’ve only been a coward once. We both let Lara down in the past. I won’t do it again.”

Mitch caught motion behind Kade.

Lara filled the doorway with a wide stance and plasma gun in hand. She pointed it at Kade’s chest. “Both of you are coming with me. Like it or not, Mother, you’re taking a trip to Alpha Haven.”