Kidnapped (13 page)

William nodded and patted his lap, urging his wife to come sit down. Seeing them together made the situation more normal to Patricia, but it also made her intensely sad. She wanted to be at home, snugly curled up in
her
man's lap, and she didn't know if that would ever be possible again.

Not until now did she realize she'd truly come to consider the ship home, and just thinking about it made more tears well up in her now puffy eyes, no matter how hard she tried to blink them away. This place was cosier, no doubt about that, but she still longed for the bare metal corridors and rooms on Travis's ship.

Isabela reached out to put a hand on Patricia's arm, "Honey, pretend this is a normal day when you're sitting with some friends having tea," and William rolled his eyes with an amused face that actually made Patricia smile, even though she didn't want to.

Everyone sat in silence, and Patricia looked at the little group. They seemed like nice enough people, and they were trying to help. She would have to trust them. Travis had, and if nothing else, she should trust him, right? William looked thoughtfully at her and confessed, "I just don't know what to do with you."

It probably wasn't funny, but the little smile that had been tugging at her lips widened. "You think you should keep me locked up in here, but it seems such a shame because I'm really very harmless, and what could possibly happen if you let me roam around the ship."

Madison laughed, and William looked surprised, exclaiming, "How did you know?" 

Patricia shrugged and William shook his head a little, dismissing the matter. Instead, he asked, "So, how much do you really know about Travis?"

She answered evenly, "I know I love him, and he's good to me. That's enough."

It was Madison's turn to lean forward and put a hand on her arm, and Patricia was surprised at how touchy-feely this group of people was. "I'm sure he loves you too Sweetheart. But we need to know how it happened, right Bill?"

Their Captain cleared his throat, "Yes, Madison's right. Your lover isn't exactly known for his... uh, gentleness around the galaxy, and it's important for us to figure out, uh... how this, uh... how it happened."

He seemed flustered with the subject, and Patricia felt reluctantly amused. In another world in another life, she would probably have liked him.

Looking thoughtful, William reached out to take a cookie from the plate his wife had brought in and tapped it against the table. "Let's just start at the beginning. The Alliance takes children with the right genetic disposition and brings them to a large complex. We don't know exactly where it is, just that it's somewhere close to the center of the galaxy. Which is a very large and dangerous area."

He paused and looked at her, and Patricia gave her head a slight nod to show she was paying attention. "Anyway, these children are conditioned through drugs and pain, programmed like one would do with a computer, to eventually only feel fear, pain and loyalty to the Alliance. They become obedient slaves, tools if you wish, that will never question an order, never back down from a task no matter how gruesome it is, and never turn their backs on their masters."

She just blinked. Travis had mentioned the conditioning, but never explained what it was, and she never asked. He hadn't seemed to want to talk about it, and she had assumed she didn't want to know. She would have called a process like that brainwashing, or torture, but maybe programming was just as good a word. No matter what one called it, it sounded horrible.

Madison interjected softly, "No one has ever broken through the conditioning before, not in all the history of the Alliance. It is unheard of."

Patricia made a helpless, pleading gesture; she didn't know what to say. "I don't know what to tell you, I don't know how it happened. There's no how or why to things like this."

William pulled a hand through his hair and sighed softly, "That's just it, though. He's not supposed to be able to feel
anything
for other people, not even for himself. Don't get me wrong, it's a great thing that it happened."

He leaned his chin against his wife's shoulder and seemed to be talking to himself. "I don't know how he's gonna handle it, but my part of the deal is to keep
you
safe, and we can do that."

Looking back at Patricia, he asked with a frown, "Why didn't he keep you locked up in the first place?"

"For the same reason you're contemplating letting me out of this room. I'm harmless."

The rebel leader stared at her for a moment, speechless, and then he began laughing heartily. "Imagine that."

Isabela had been sitting in silence for a while, but now her melodic voice broke into the discussion. "Maybe that's all it took. I mean, no offense, honey, but letting you wander around his ship is a pretty big disobedience in itself, and Travis was always strong-minded. He has disobeyed orders before, and been duly punished for it. Maybe spending some time with a normal person was what he needed."

Patricia was afraid to ask, and her voice sounded mousy when she did, "What's going to happen to him?"

Her new friends exchanged a glance, and Madison answered, "If he plays his cards right, nothing. I think he's hoping to be sent back out after us. He's playing a dangerous game, but it could work."

Looking between them, she sensed there was more. "Or what?"

This time, Madison didn't want to answer, and Patricia could read the words out of the long silence, even before William spoke, "Well, if they find out what happened, they'll kill him for sure. This is the biggest disobedience anyone's heard of for generations."

Patricia had one more question, something everyone seemed to take for granted and she just didn't understand. "Why can't he run away?"

The distances between planets and stars and different parts of the galaxy were so large it boggled her mind, and she couldn't understand how anyone could ever find a person who didn't wish to leave a trail behind.

Isabela cleared her throat and answered, "Well, Sweetie, the Alliance don't just rely on their conditioning to keep people in check, they have tracking devices implanted in all their personnel. It doesn't matter where he goes; they always know where he is."

*****

The next few days were a trial to Patricia. Everyone on board had a task and a place, except for her, and she quickly got bored with just sitting. Both Isabela and Madison made a point of spending time with her, and she was starting to feel like they were really becoming friends, but she was still deeply depressed.

Garth bullied her every chance he got, and even if the others on the ship tried to shield her from the truth, it was clear the large man had almost beaten her lover to death. Isabela claimed, in a backwards attempt to comfort, that Travis had been alive when they left him. It didn't make Patricia feel one bit better. She kept telling herself he was fine, but feared the worst. Garth didn't waste an opportunity to let her know he'd be more than happy to treat her the same way, and she made sure never to risk being alone with him. She wanted to hate him, but something about him was too pitiful and she couldn't. When he got too loud and punched his fist through a cupboard right next to her face, William shouted he'd get to spend some good time in the brig. It helped a little.

It didn't take long for her to figure out Aaren was prone to taking her side whenever Garth harassed her. It seemed to surprise everyone else, but the graying computer expert just shrugged and claimed it was in his own interest. As long as Travis was the one assigned to chasing them, he'd be less interested in blasting them out of the sky if Patricia was there. She didn't mind them seeing her as life insurance, and she took comfort from his words. Not even Travis could hunt rebels if he was dead.

She spent countless hours in Aaren's company as he tried to explain to her how technology really worked. She wasn't all that interested to begin with, but as time went by having something to do made life feel better, and once she got to know him, he was good company.

Chapter Fourteen

One evening when she had been on the ship for about two months, Patricia sat looking at a little hologram of the Earth, wondering what her friends and family were doing. Did they still miss her? She must be long since buried by now, and she wondered what they had been saying about her when they realized she was gone.

She didn't really expect William to bring her back there. She had learned from Travis's computer that her planet was far away in one of the spiral arms of the galaxy, in the middle of nowhere as far as the Alliance was concerned. If she ever did get to go back, explaining her absence would be difficult. She could tell the truth, of course, say that she had been abducted by a man from another planet. Her story might land her in a comfortable psychiatrist's office with nice medications that at least would make her forget the heartbreak.

Maybe, as time went by and she found her way back to normal life, all this would turn into a haze. Maybe she would be able to live a normal life again, and think of all this as a dream. It didn't seem probable, but maybe...

Someone knocked on the door and she glanced up, surprised to see Aaren enter with a mischievous look on his face. He helped himself to a seat, fixed his eyes on her for a long moment, appeared to come to a decision, and asked, "Do you know where we are?"

She generally kept the curtains closed; there was too much space outside for her to want to deal with it. Asking where they were seemed like a dumb question, but he wouldn't say something like that without reason. She couldn't figure it out, and answered with a little sigh, "Space. We're in space, and there's lots of it."

Flashing a smile, he said, "Kind of right, but not what I was getting at. Try again."

Rolling her eyes, she went over to the window and peeked out. She hadn't even noticed the ship had stopped, but they were hovering close to a giant space station. It looked festive with all its lights. "Alright, we're at a space station. It's kinda ugly and pretty at the same time."

Aaren grinned. "Correct. It's run by the Alliance in theory, but it's not all that bad."

She still hadn't figured out the purpose of all this and she lifted an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue. Leaning forward in the chair, he fixed her with his eyes and told her seriously, "It's been a long time, and I know you still cry yourself to sleep every night. The others might not know, but I do. You're a good kid, and even if Travis still isn't one of my favorite people in the world, eh..."

He paused, frowned, and asked abruptly, "Do you want to see him?"

Patricia stared, not believing her ears. If someone else had asked the same question, she would have thought they were joking, but Aaren wouldn't do that. He was a nice man, intelligent and serious, and definitely not a prankster. Her voice was very quiet when she answered, "Of course I do."

Aaren nodded. "Very well."

He drew a deep breath and continued in a very serious voice, "I know where he is, but the others don't. I've been working on getting a lock on his tracking transmitters, and all of a sudden, when we came to this station, he was right there on the screen. I ran several tests and I'm sure. Travis is on this station, I can even tell you where."

He hesitated, as if wondering how much to tell her. "If I put you down close to him, tell you how to get there, will you do something for me?"

Patricia's heart was beating hard, even though she kept telling herself not to get her hopes up. She might just end up stranded in a new place, with neither Travis nor her new friends to rely on. Then, she told herself this wasn't a time to hesitate or be a coward, so she nodded decisively, and Aaren grimaced. "Very well. Bill is up to one of his usual silly stunts, and I don't know if that's why your boy is here or not. Probably not, but either way, it would be so easy for you to keep him occupied for a little while."

He was blushing slightly now, and Patricia wondered what the big secret was. He pulled a hand through his hair and confessed, "You know, I don't care much about Bill's grand quest, but he's taking Madison. I, eh..."

She flashed a smile. She would never have expected her usually grumpy friend to have a thing for purple women. "Your secret's safe with me Aaren. I won't tell a soul."

He nodded a couple of times. "Good. That's good. You'll need some other clothes, and then we'll go look at the transporter room, inconspicuously."

*****

Patricia materialized in a dark corridor and looked around carefully. No one was there, no one had seen her. Aaren had warned her even the hookers stayed as far away from Alliance personnel as possible, but pretending to be one was still her best bet if she wanted to keep Travis's cover. Thus, she had dressed up in a ridiculous outfit and stood balancing on heels seemingly as long as her legs. She was afraid she'd be too slow, that her lover wouldn't be there anymore when she got there, and she took her shoes off, held them in her hand, and started to run.

*****

Travis was no closer to a solution to his problems than he'd been before. The trip to Central had been arduous, and life since he left it much lonelier than he had expected it to be, or remembered it to be for that matter..