Chapter Ten #2
From what I could tell, the ship carrying Blake had not yet arrived on Earth or even in orbit, around it, but there was chatter about it on their airwaves that indicated it was expected soon.
They were traveling slowly, so as not to draw undue attention to themselves and not to enhance their heat signature.
The extra time would give me a chance to have investigators clean out the Veranon religious order back on Tygeria.
I had never admired that religion, nor felt any attraction or allegiance to it, though roughly a third of the population did.
When all of this was exposed, it would come as a huge shock to the people, but I had faith in their resilience and their patriotism.
I ordered the Army to go in and take over immediately from the priests and throw the lot of them in prison. I could sort them out later.
Meanwhile, I began to plan for what I’d do to retrieve my mate. I thought I wouldn’t let the ship carrying him get all the way to Earth before I retrieved what was mine.
“Take Rabb back to his cell,” I told the guards and turned around in my chair to face the porthole.
Out here in space, the stars weren’t at all constant and unchanging, like they were when I’d seen them from home.
I took heart from that idea. Even things that seemed eternal could change, depending on your vantage point, and that included these stars.
For now, Blake was on a ship that was far away from me, but it wouldn’t be forever.
I had to believe that. For now he was in a place where I couldn’t get to him, on his way back to Earth—but I would soon change that.
I was going to bring him home to me and to our child—if it was the last thing I ever did.
?? ?? ?? ??
Blake
Another ten days passed, and I was getting stronger every day, though still in little bit of pain from the surgery.
Still, I was recovering nicely, and it was going on four weeks now since I’d had my operation.
I tried to remember how long it had taken my old ship to get near Tygeria almost a year and a half ago now, when we’d been intercepted and taken prisoner, but I couldn’t remember.
I thought it had been around two weeks. We’d taken one of the well-known wormholes, which had probably been the mistake that had alerted the Tygerians to us being on the way.
More arrogance of the Alliance officers at the time.
Hopefully some of them had wised up by now.
Or was I really hopeful? It was so odd not to automatically be on the side of Earth and the Alliance anymore.
I wasn’t exactly against them either. I just wished this awful war would end so there would be no need to take sides.
Until then, I guess the best I could hope for was for the universe to keep Davos and my baby safe, no matter what else happened.
My baby would be a month old in another three or four days and I couldn’t see him or hold him or tell him I much I missed him.
They had told me to get up and walk around the deck, under guard, of course, to regain my strength.
Since I had no robes to wear, they had given me some Earth type clothing—trousers, shirt and underwear, along with some ugly, plain black shoes.
Everything fit fairly well but wasn’t as comfortable as the robes I’d grown used to wearing.
Evoq or Colonel Morris, I should say, had a barber sent to my quarters too, since they didn’t want me leaving them for long, to give me a shave and a haircut.
I appreciated the shave, but I’d begun to like wearing my hair a little longer.
It was curly enough that it wasn’t much trouble, and like I’d always said, I’d never been much of a soldier or looked much like one of the squared-away Marines. I’d never wanted to.
Morris asked me if I wanted to contact anyone on Earth and let them know I was coming home. I said no, because the only family I had left were distant cousins I barely knew. I told him my family was back at home. On Tygeria.
He gave me a disgusted look. He didn’t like me saying that, which meant that I enjoyed it immensely. He kept telling me I was brainwashed. I replied, “Yeah, funny how that keeps happening to me.”
It would soon be time for a dinner tray.
The only thing I really enjoyed about being on this damn ship was the food.
Fried chicken, steak, potatoes, green beans, peas and carrots—not to mention the cakes and pies.
It wasn’t even particularly well-prepared, but it was the food I’d grown up eating, and I hadn’t had it in a long time.
At first, I made a pig of myself at every meal.
I ate pizza and tacos and spaghetti and ice cream until I thought I’d pop.
I think I gained more than a few pounds actually, but there was little else to do here except eat and sleep.
We were still about a day away from entering an orbit around Earth, or so one of the stewards who brought my food trays told me.
I wasn’t looking forward to landing in the least. Yet I was going a little stir crazy and ready to be off this ship.
A knock came on my door, and I got up to answer. As I expected, it was Morris. No one else really came to see me except for the doctors.
“I thought you might enjoy eating dinner in the mess hall, tonight.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“No occasion. But we should be entering Earth’s orbit sometime late tomorrow, and I thought you might want to celebrate a bit.”
“I have nothing to celebrate.”
He sighed in that long-suffering way he had and tried a smile. “Nonetheless, would you like to go down to the mess hall? It might make a nice change.”
I shrugged. “I guess so. Why not?”
I followed him down to the lift and then to the next deck below us.
Of course, everyone stopped eating as I came in and stared at me, making me feel self-conscious.
But Morris gave a general frown around the room at large, and they turned back to their meals.
Was this how it would be on Earth? Would everyone stare at me and whisper about me wherever I went?
The dinner that evening was pleasant enough, and I enjoyed the mixture of American and Italian food they were serving.
There wasn’t any wine, of course, but I had some iced tea, which was frankly awful—I had never enjoyed tea of any kind, neither hot nor cold—I much preferred coffee or a big glass of ice water.
The first course was a mixed salad, with not enough of the kind of lettuce I liked.
I strongly disliked the fancy dark green kind.
I thought they might as well stop on the side of the road and gather up a few weeds as far as I was concerned.
I preferred plain old iceberg lettuce. Morris seemed to like the fancier, dark green stuff, because of course, he did.
He talked to me about how exciting it would be to see New York again, which was where we’d be docking, I gathered.
He asked me about going shopping, too, and what kind of shops I looked forward to visiting again.
He wanted so much for me to be nostalgic about arriving “home,” but I’d never even been to New York City, nor had I ever had much money to buy clothes.
Morris was quiet, but I felt his eyes on me often.
Dessert was a slice of cake with a sticky, sweet sauce.
It was delicious, but messy. I didn’t have a napkin so I licked my fingers clean and again caught Morris looking at me curiously.
We had coffee after the meal and then it was done, and I could safely escape back to my room.
I hated playing this game with Morris, the one where he pretended everything was fine and normal, and I was looking forward to going back home, like the last two years had never happened.
I must have been unlike any other repatriated former prisoner he’d been around.
We were almost back to my cabin—had reached the little side corridor that led into it, in fact—when the ship suddenly jolted, lurching to one side and knocking us both off our feet to the deck.
A horribly loud scraping, grinding sound was shattering the peace, sounding like the whole ship was coming apart.
Frightened that we might be going down, I clutched Morris’s arm as raucous alarm sirens began to blare, combined with the shouts of the crewmen and the sounds of running feet overhead.
It sounded like we were being attacked, and for one quick moment, my heart leapt.
As always, I wondered the same question—could it be Davos coming to rescue me at last?
My heart started banging around in my chest as the sounds pierced right through me.
I scrambled back to my feet, and I began looking around, frantic for some sign that this might be Davos.
Morris scrambled back up too, looking panicked.
I was feeling a little nervous and disoriented.
I couldn’t think of which way I should run—to find Davos or to hide in my quarters.
Because what if this wasn’t Davos at all, but pirates?
They were bad in this part of the solar system.
Morris had hurt himself when he fell, maybe biting down on his tongue, and he had blood on his lips.
He wiped his sleeve across his mouth as he struggled to his feet, though the ship was beginning to tilt, and he struggled to pull me to my room.