Gathering Storm (7 page)

“Oh! Like that’s possible!”

“Good to see the sarcasm is unaffected.” He
didn’t look up from his monitor to see the withering look he got in
response.

She trudged home feeling
heavy and dejected. That last part was resented in the worst way
because she knew she was feeling pissy and spoiled and didn’t like
the way either one fit. Monq was right. She’d gotten comfortable in
her role as semi-invincible.
So this is
life as a mere mortal
. She chastised
herself for feeling entitled to the privilege of extra strength and
speed.

Ram was holding Helm above
his lap and laughing while the baby did a tiptoe jig on his da’s
thighs. He looked up when Elora came in. “Somethin’
wrong?”

“It takes a little getting
used to.”

Walking over, slowly, she
reached to pick up the baby and give him a smooch. And almost
dropped him.

"Great Paddy! This child weighs a ton!"

Ram snickered. “’Tis the
word on the street. Never thought to be hearin’ it from you
though.”

She sat down on the sofa
next to Ram with Helm on her lap, looking thoughtful as she jiggled
him. “You know…” her eyes cut toward her mate, “all the way from
the lab I’ve been trying to find an upside to this
predicament.”

“Um-hmm?” Ram leaned into her side and
nuzzled her neck below her ear, as if he knew what she was
thinking.

“Monq calls the chemical
the Equalizer.”

“Uh-huh,” he said absently
as he continued nuzzling.

“And I was thinking that
we’ve never made love as two ordinary elves.”

He drew back and looked
into Elora’s eyes with an expression suddenly grown serious.
“Ordinary elves is it? Ordinariness is no’ possible for you, Elora.
Do you no’ know that? No’ even if you put a paper bag over your
head.”

“Please tell me that’s not a fantasy.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “No. No’ at
all.”

“Thank you for the lovely
compliment. Back to what I was saying; aren’t you curious about
what it would be like? I think I might enjoy no restraint, not
having to worry about squeezing too tight or raking my nails down
your back.”

Rammel’s pupils dilated as
he went instantly hard, making his eyes look navy blue. He searched
her face for less than two seconds. “Call Elsbeth.”

“She’s got plans.”

“Cook’s always askin’.”

“It’s early enough in the day that she might
have a couple of hours.” Rammel grinned. “You call her. I’ll get a
diaper bag ready to go.”

After a lengthy experience of sex with
native Loti strength, Rammel bore the marks of no-holds-barred
fucking and reveled in every one of them.

“Great Paddy, would you
look at me, woman?” Ram turned his naked body first one way and
then the other while he admired himself in the full-length mirror.
“I’m shredded. If I ever get you without your extras again, we will
be trimmin’ your nails first.”

“I hear your words, but
they’re bouncing off that smile.”

He laughed and sailed through the air then
bounced on the bed next to Elora. “Aye. Will suffer pain for your
pleasure any day.”

She leaned up on an elbow
and looked down at him, then lowered her head to place a kiss in
one of the valleys of his abs. Since he was relaxed and not
aroused, he was ticklish. He tried to roll away, but she held him
down without effort, which immediately drained away the
fun.

Elora looked at her watch
and sent Monq a text. Three hours, seventeen minutes.

Ram pulled up to his
elbows. “What’s wrong?”

She turned back to look at him.

“I clocked three hours, seventeen minutes
that the gas was effective on me. I was just sitting here wondering
what would happen if that wasn’t enough time to… take care of
things. And I was thinking about sending Monq another text asking
if there is enough Equalizing gas in the system to deliver a second
round.”

Ram reached out and ran
his fingertips down her spine, which gave her a pleasant shiver
from head to toe.

“You’re worryin’ the thin’
more than you should. I’m gettin’ there is wisdom in precaution to
a point. But the chance of Jefferson Unit comin’ under attack?
Dwellin’ on it is just silly. ‘Tis why we live here, you
know.”

She turned and grinned at
him. “Oh. Is
that
why we’re here? I thought it was for the free and plentiful
babysitting.”

“’
Aye. ‘Tis a nice perk and
one we shall miss when we leave.”

CHAPTER 5

Stagsnare Dimension

Archer had looked at the
equation from every angle. A thousand times. He couldn’t solve for
the unknown because he was missing a critical factor. His superiors
wanted results immediately. Nothing new about that. When had they
ever said, “We want results. Take your time.”? The face that the
puzzle was missing essential pieces was irrelevant so far as they
were concerned.

He sighed, turned over,
and looked at the bright LED display on the alarm clock, the only
light in the darkness. Sleeplessness had been more rule than
exception for a long time. He spent his nights tossing, turning and
cursing at himself. At the moment he was engaged in his usual
nocturnal pastime, staring at the clock that mocked him. Time. It
was his biggest problem. Because he’d run out of it.

The Council had decided
that a second expedition would be launched to find the escaped
Laiwynn royal. It had been less than three months since the last
had claimed the lives of twelve young healthy Ralengclan males,
each of whom would have been an asset to the gene pool. They were
officially classified as MIA rather than KIA, but if anyone thought
there was a chance that they’d survived, they weren’t optimists.
They were fools.

Of course there were a few detractors who
were cynical enough to realize that MIA meant not having to pay the
families death benefits. Bastards.

Politics followed its
normal course of bureaucratic ineptitude and rewarded the idiot in
charge of the senseless debacle, Lt. Rothesay, with a promotion to
Council membership.

Although Archer had no
proof, he had theorized that a "placeholder" was required for each
life signature in a particular dimension. He wished he could claim
authorship of the idea, but the truth was that there was an obscure
reference to something of the sort in a fragment recovered from
Monq’s journals.

If the princess had
survived the trip to another dimension – and there was no proof of
that - she would theoretically have gone to a dimension where two
conditions were met: a life signature matching Monq's and a
"placeholder" for her. In other words, someone who matched her
unique life pattern, but was deceased.

The Council had been in
far too big a hurry to explore that possibility. When the first
team failed to return on the appointed date, or any thereafter,
Council members had decided to grant Archer three months to better
prepare for the next trip.

Archer had tried to
impress upon them that, if his theory was correct and he sent
someone to a dimension where the matching life signature was
occupied, they would simply cease to exist - as in vanish or
disappear. The idea of that had chilled him before. After having
been instrumental in wiping out the lives of the entire expedition,
his conscience was bruised and constantly throbbing. No doubt the
root cause of his insomnia.

Truthfully, the additional
time had done little to change anything. He continued to cling to
the original premise of his working theory, but the reprieve of
three months had rendered nothing in the way of new evidence. Just
guessing, guessing and more guessing.

Archer wasn’t into
guessing. Scientists pride themselves on dealing in facts. Nothing
was more uncomfortable than playing parlor games with cosmic
operations and yet that was exactly what he found himself
doing.

Without the benefit of
reliable data and replicable results, there was nowhere to turn
except to gut feeling. His mother’s intuition had been fodder for
inside family joking that bordered on ridicule, but that intuition
was also typically unerring in a way that had been disturbing to a
budding young scientist. There was an effect without an explainable
cause.

The chasm between physics
and metaphysics was not easily bridged because adherents of each
were passionate about their dissimilar beliefs, not to mention that
both sides were convinced that they were “right”.

Still, he found himself
hoping, to gods he didn’t believe in, that he had inherited a
little bit of his mother’s intuitive gift. Another crop of young
lives depended on it.

Of course, someone was in
line to feed the universal constant of sacrifice, but at least that
sacrifice would be on the part of nameless, faceless young men who
had no connection to him and their nameless, faceless mothers,
wives, siblings, friends and maybe children. He wouldn’t again make
the mistake of engaging any of the probable victims in conversation
as he’d done with Rystrome. He would send them on their way without
so much as making eye contact. Better for everybody that
way.

While he lay in the dark
alone, wide awake and staring at the red LED light on the clock,
thinking about the course of events that he would put in motion the
next day, he tried – hard - to
not
focus on the likely outcome of the
mission.

He blamed himself for the entire thing.
Himself and his big mouth. If he hadn’t revealed that he’d
deciphered the code Monq had used to map the Laiwynn’s destination,
he could have claimed – honestly – that the search was infinitely
hopeless, a grain of sand in the Sahara. But he had reason to
believe it was narrowed down to less than twenty possible
destinations.

When he began to make out
gray stripes on the ceiling, it meant first light was streaming
past shutter slats. It was a relief of sorts. He could set all hope
of sleep aside and move on. So he threw off the covers, grateful
for an excuse to get up and fill the silence with noise and other
distractions.

He showered, shaved,
pulled on clothes and made his way to work. That meant opening his
apartment door and walking fifteen feet to his main computer. He’d
taken over the basement complex that had formerly belonged to
Thelonius M. Monq. It included a well-stocked study-library, a
large lab and a bachelor apartment that was comfortable and stylish
in a medieval minimalist way. He’d been given a generous allowance
to make changes, but found that the setup suited him as it was. So
the allowance had been funneled into a scholarship program for Lt.
Rystrome’s children. That was why Rystrome had volunteered – to get
the money to educate his children. Archer shook his head and then
shook off thinking about that.

He glanced at his watch.
One hour until commencement of the death parade. That wasn’t the
official name of the project, of course, but it’s what he called it
in his own head. Before his assignment was complete there were
going to be a lot of corpses. It was inevitable. And it was a
waste. All the lives that would be cut short, all the squandered
potential, just for a dubious seek-and-destroy with one
inconsequential Laiwynn girl as the target. One who most likely
died in her escape attempt. What a gigantic waste of resources! He
didn’t agree with it, but was powerless to stop it.

One hour to get breakfast
before the countdown. After checking in with his system, he opted
for coffee only. He could always eat when and if his appetite ever
returned.

Archer had lined up twenty
sacrificial lambs except that, unlike ancient tradition, they
weren’t lambs and they weren’t healthy. They were men who were
walking around in bodies that had medically-established expiration
dates. Yeah. Terminal illnesses.

The new Ralengclan
government made deals with the guys. If they survived transport and
returned, they’d be given the opportunity to serve their clansmen
in a legendary way. The new offer was that, either way, the
families’ circumstances would be elevated to a state of luxurious
security. Archer’s superiors hadn’t been happy about coughing up
funds for the program, but he’d played the old we’re-better-than
Laiwynn card, which usually turned the key in the lock. And,
truthfully, he’d been surprised by the number of
volunteers.

Right on schedule the
first walking dead was escorted in. The guy was tall, fortyish and
lean in a way that suggested either illness or a very hard life.
Maybe both. His cheeks were gaunt and the skin around his eyes was
gray, but he was upright with an alert gleam in his eye that looked
out of place with the rest of him.

Archer offered his hand
out of courtesy and motioned for the man to sit for final
instructions.

“I know you’ve been
through this many times, but just to be sure, let’s go over it once
more. When all motion has ceased, step outside the device and run
the locator program exactly the way you practiced. Don’t linger.
Don’t walk around. Don’t spend time looking around. The transport
is programmed to open and readmit you in three minutes. Turn around
and get back on the machine.

“If the light is red, you will automatically
proceed to the next stop and repeat. If the light is green, board
the transport and push the big green button. You’ll return
immediately.