Beloved Stranger: Gaian Series, Book 5 (25 page)

If they only had the time.

Allan untied the boat, and Roan played with the motor. She heard a soft purr and the boat began moving slowly through the water away from the dock. In moments the blackness seemed to close in around them, the only light fading into the background.

“Roan?” Sonja couldn’t help how shaky her voice was, but she suddenly needed the reassurance of his voice.

She felt his warm hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right, Sonja. I’m right here. Allan, I think we can turn a light on for at least a little while.”

“Sure thing.” Allan fussed in front of her, and then a small lantern lit up the darkness. Now Sonja could see some of the tunnel around her, and she gasped.

“It’s beautiful!” The light illuminated small crystals embedded in the walls of the cavern, which reflected all the colors of the rainbow. It was like floating under a sea of stars.

Roan and Allan both laughed. “Yes, it is.” Roan sounded exceedingly pleased with her appreciation. “This was one of the reasons I used to explore these caverns. The crystals are formed from minerals leaking out of the rock with the water. You can only see them when there is light, but they are a glorious sight.”

Glorious indeed, and her eyes feasted on the image, small sparkling reflections of green, blue and the brightest red. This was the private world he’d wanted to share with her, and suddenly Sonja was glad she’d come to fetch the second boat, even if she’d had other reasons earlier.

It was good she’d had a chance to see what Roan had seen when he’d first come down here in his early days in the prison. The place he said had saved his sanity. It would have been perfect, but she was still freezing in the unusually chilly and damp air. She shivered as a light breeze came across the water.

“Sweetheart, why didn’t you say you were cold? Allan, don’t we have an extra jacket?”

Again the man moved, and this time Sonja saw he was reaching into a small compartment built into the front of the boat. He pulled a small packet from inside and opened it up to reveal a folded and rolled jacket. She pulled it on gratefully. It was thin and too big but far warmer than she expected.

Sonja leaned back on her little bench and enjoyed floating under the beautiful ceiling. They went through tunnel after tunnel until she had no idea where she was. Clearly Roan did, because he never seemed to make the same turn twice. After a few moments she saw a distant light, and then they were inside another very large cavern similar to the one under Beta Residence. The light was attached to a dock that floated at the bottom of another elevator shaft.

Tied up to the dock was a boat similar to the one they were in, although at least two meters longer. That must be the “bigger boat” Roan had mentioned.

They tied up and climbed out of the boat, Sonja using as much care as she had getting in, using Roan’s arm for support and trying to avoid tipping out of the boat.

When she was on the relative safety of the bobbing dock, she gave a sigh of relief. Only twice more getting in and out of a boat, and she’d be done with this strange business of boats and floating docks.

The three were silent as they made their way into the elevator, and it shook its way up the shaft to the surface. Allan seemed tense, probably eager to get back to Suna. But as they arrived, he gave Roan a grimace as a particularly violent rattle shook the elevator.

“You might want to let the real maintenance people have a look at this, Roan.”

The man shook his head. “It does seem to have gotten worse. I’ll have to move the boats to a hidden location, but it will be safer than letting the elevators fail.”

A wave of sadness swept over Sonja as she heard Roan talking about tasks he needed to do after she left. He still wasn’t considering coming with her. Would it help to make another appeal?

No, this wasn’t the time. She held her silence as they slid quietly out of the maintenance building and down the pathways that led to Nick’s Bar. It was getting close to opening time for the bar, and they were worried that one of the other bartenders might have shown up already, discovering the women and child hiding there. But only Tron opened the back door to them, and everyone was safe.

“Let’s go,” Roan said, and quietly they all left. They sped down the winding overgrown paths of Delta Residence, Sonja keeping one hand on the stunner in her pocket. She wasn’t going to let any would-be thieves interfere with this rescue now.

Just as they were about to get to the small path leading to the maintenance building and the elevator that would take them down to the boats, a man came down the path, and recognized Sulla’s husband.

“Tron!” The man eyed the bags and the child Tron was carrying. “Where are you going?”

“Hi Harry.” Tron looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Well, my wife and daughter…”

Allan and Suna were far in front of them as if part of a different group. They slowed but didn’t come back, Allan keeping a firm grasp on Suna’s arm. The man, Harry, stared suspiciously at Tron when it seemed he didn’t have an answer.

Sonja stepped forward. “Sulla and Alice are coming to visit me for a few days.” She took Roan’s arm. “My husband and I just settled into a new place and I asked her help in fixing it up.”

“Oh. That’s nice.” He turned back to Tron. “Are you going to be back to the bar tonight?”

Tron shook his head. “No, don’t think so. I’ll need to get them settled. Already took my name off the list.”

“Okay. I’ll take your spot. Have fun tonight.”

Harry continued on, and when he was out of earshot, Tron turned to stare at Sonja. “You’re pretty fast with the explanations, aren’t you?”

Sonja shrugged. “When I need to be.”

He shook his head with amusement. “You and the Dealer. It’s a match, for sure.”

Tron moved on to catch up with Suna and Allan, carrying Alice and with Sulla on his arm, leaving Sonja to stare after them. She looked up at Roan, who looked as taken aback as she felt.

She and Roan were a match, and it was so obvious that everyone knew it. How could they break apart? They began moving down the path again, but their steps were slower. Sonja kept her hand on Roan’s arm, and it was as much for comfort as the camouflage of being a couple.

Once again they reached the maintenance building and Allan tricked open the locks to let them inside. This time, though, he opened his bag and pulled out a small device. He held it up to Suna’s arm. “I’m going to deactivate all of our tracking tags so that a scanner won’t be able to locate us when we’re down there.”

Allan held the neutralizer up to everyone’s arm and finally had Suna do his. He turned to Roan. “Your turn, buddy.”

Roan looked reluctant then held his arm out. “I’ll want you to show me how to reactivate it later.”

Allan nodded. “I’ll leave the device with you. You never know when you’ll want to be ‘invisible’ to the authorities.”

Sonja saw the loss in Roan’s eyes and the answering sorrow in Allan’s, but neither man said anything as Allan finished deactivating Roan’s tracker and put the device away in his bag.

Roan was showing the strain of losing his friend, she realized. He could never ask Allan to stay, but he wasn’t happy that his friend was leaving him alone.

Would that have any effect on his decision? Not likely.

The elevator had been made to hold an entire crew of ten men for the descent into the mine, so all of them fit comfortably. Sonja noticed that none of the others were any happier with sounds the unmaintained elevator made than she was. Each jerk and shriek of abused metal made the women cling tighter to their men. When they arrived at the bottom, everyone seemed to give a sigh of relief.

Neither of her sisters was any happier with the bobbing of the dock than she had been, and they eyed the small boats waiting for them with palpable dread.

“It isn’t that bad,” she told them. “In fact, it was actually really pretty. Wait until you see the crystals in the roof of the tunnel.”

The women relaxed, and Roan flashed her a look that was both proud and grateful. Suna actually seemed eager to get into the larger boat when Allan helped her inside. Sulla was more cautious, as she wrapped firm arms around her daughter when Tron handed her over.

Roan pulled Sonja to the second boat as Tron and Allan climbed into the biggest boat. “They’ll go first and we’ll follow. If there is any trouble, Allan knows how to navigate to the spaceport while you and I will keep any followers from catching up. With only two people, this boat can outrun most of the other vessels down here.”

“The guards have boats?”

“Yes. We didn’t build the docks. Those were made a long time ago, and all we do is take advantage of them. After I found the first boat and repaired it, I built the second one myself and smuggled the motors for them in.” He took a look around. “I rarely see anyone else down here, but every once in a while I’ll hear another engine echoing in the caverns. That’s why we use quiet electric motors. If they can’t hear us, they can’t find us.”

“Particularly now that your tracker is deactivated.”

“True enough. I’m glad Allan thought of that. This way we are ghosts in the waterways.”

Roan helped her into the boat and took his position behind her. In front of them Tron followed Allan’s instructions and untied their boat, and slowly the bigger craft edged away from the dock. Sonja did the same for their boat so Roan could go after them.

Soon they were again cruising down one of the long tunnels. The boat in front of them disappeared into the darkness, and then a small light flared. Sonja smiled as she heard the whispered exclamations of delight when her sisters saw the crystals. She’d been right to mention that. It made the trip less frightening when there was something so beautiful to look at.

Sonja leaned back to whisper to Roan. “How long will it take to get to the spaceport?”

“At this speed nearly an hour. The boats are much slower than the shuttles.”

An hour was a long time for someone not used to being in the dark or on water. Sonja hoped her sisters would remain calm for the entire trip. “How long have you been smuggling down here?”

“I started in the middle of my fifth year here. There was always a black market for goods that the company shops wouldn’t or couldn’t carry. Women’s clothes in particular, since initially there were so few women here and officially many of the wives simply didn’t exist. So the company couldn’t bring in the kind of merchandise in the kinds of quantities I could.”

“I notice there are a number of stores now for women’s clothes.”

“But as you noticed, they don’t carry the same quality, and they can’t get the same amount without someone on Gaia noticing.”

She leaned back on the bench. “I still think you should see if they’d be interested in upgrading their offerings. Perhaps someone could make a deal with some of the small shops to handle upscale items. Also, I bet there would be a real interest in materials like cloth and embroidery thread. The few Gaian women I’ve know have liked to make things themselves.”

She heard amusement in Roan’s voice. “Are you suggesting I go legitimate, Sonja?”

Was that what she was suggesting? No, she wanted Roan to leave with her, not have another excuse to stay on Ares Five. Her suggestion had come from her thinking about possibilities, not what she wanted to happen.

“I guess it’s a bad idea. After all, you’d have to explain where you got your merchandise in the first place and that would mean admitting to smuggling. You’d probably just get into trouble.”

He laughed. “You’d be surprised who I sell to, Sonja. Many people in authority in the prison turn a blind eye to my smuggling since I can bring in the luxury goods they want. Even so, I like the idea of setting something more official up. The idea of branching out into raw materials is a great one. There isn’t all that much the women here can do while their husbands are in the mines.”

“Won’t the Gaian authorities eventually figure out what’s been going on here? Smuggling in stolen women and selling them to the inmates?”

“The women aren’t sold!”

She shrugged. “They can call it a ‘marriage fee’ but the cost is too high to be even remotely legitimate. The women are being sold into marriage.”

“Who would tell the authorities on Gaia? The men gaining wives wouldn’t say anything.”

“There are people who’ve heard about the slave trade providing wives for Gaian miners who were not prisoners here.”

Roan grew very still. “People you talked to before you came here? Someone from Gaia?” His voice was deadly quiet. At her nod he was still for a long time. “Then things are going to change here very soon.”

“Another reason for you to leave, Roan. You don’t want to get caught up in that kind of mess.”

Again he was silent for a while. “You really want me to leave with you. Why? Have you accepted that I’m your husband even though you don’t believe in the way we choose our spouses?”

She didn’t have an answer for him so she lapsed into silence. What could she say? No, she didn’t believe that two people could simply meet in a dark room and sight-unseen fall in love based on their chemistry.

But she couldn’t deny that Roan meant more to her than any man she’d ever spent time with, including her first love, Bearn. She couldn’t argue that Suna hadn’t been happily married or that her sister Sulla didn’t love her husband Tron.