The Covenant (9 page)

built with mantonium were banned because the results were so horrific the

military could find no place to even test them, nor are we willing to risk any

more soldiers in the attempt. Even a small amount in the wrong hands…”

He trailed off, but he didn’t need to finish.

Everyone in the room understood.

“Maybe we’re wrong.” The one female member said it in her clear

concise voice. She was also one of the youngest members, a brilliant

political analyst and successful politician. Leeta Vitol folded her hands on

the council table. “Where did you get this information, Governor Kartel?

You said you have evidence about the power station being designed with

intent to sabotage its use. All kinds of colony engineers have looked at it

from what I understand.”

He hesitated. If he told truth and was wrong about all of this, he could

be in serious trouble. However, to give credence to his theory it was

probably necessary to divulge his source. He finally said briefly, “Armada

himself.”

“I thought you said he was being detained in isolation on Rapt One.”

She looked at him with censorious scrutiny.

“He is.” Ran smiled, a humorless curve of his mouth. “It takes more

than being imprisoned to stop him, trust me.”

* * * *

Larik heard the sound, registered what it was, and sat up so fast his head

spun. Trey was already up, he saw, bare-chested, his dark hair tousled, a

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53

worried look on his face as he hovered by the door to the cleansing facility.

He lifted his hand and knocked lightly on the panel. “Aspen?”

She didn’t answer, probably because she couldn’t.

A second day in a row when she’d woken up vomiting.

Shit
, Larik thought, running a hand over his face, feeling a little sick

himself but with worry, not illness. The morning before both he and Trey

had refrained from saying much and by later in the day, it seemed to pass,

her color came back, and she ate her late meal with them as usual and

appeared normal. They had both been relieved when her daily scan came

back clean. No fever, no elevated vitals, and she had finally appeared to

relax, which told him she had been worried too.

Having it happen again was not a good sign. Not for someone who was

in quarantine in case they’d been infected. Not for someone who was not

going to be given any kind of medical care, or so they’d been told.

The sounds stopped, all was quiet from within the small cubicle, and it

was clear Trey wanted to go in and help her. But just as clear was they

hadn’t been invited to do so. Finally they heard water running, and a few

minutes later the door lifted.

She didn’t look just pale, she looked positively green.

Trey immediately lifted her in his arms, cradling her against his chest.

“You’re going back to bed.”

The lack of protest over his authoritative tone was not a good sign, and

she rested limply against him, her long silky hair falling over his arm like

spilled ink. He took her to the main bed, not her bunk, and laid her down as

if she might break, brushing a dark curl off her cheek. Larik saw his long

fingers tremble and felt exactly the same way.

Petrified.

Luckily, in moments she fell fast asleep again. In retrospect, she’d been

sleeping a lot lately, but they’d both attributed it to how they kept her in bed

quite a bit anyway, and there really was not much else to do.

In tacit agreement, they went into the main room. Trey didn’t hide his

worry, his good-looking face taut. “What are we going to do?”

“The governor said no medical care.” Larik felt helpless and didn’t like

it.

“You saw her, she’s sick, Armada.”

“I know.”

54

Annabel Wolfe

“Get on that fucking communications system and pretend you’re the

governor and order a doctor for her.”

If it’s the virus, no one can help her.
Larik didn’t want to say it out loud,

but he’d spent hours going over the communiqués on what put them where

they were now, trying to understand every aspect of the situation. The virus

could be a replica of a rare earth strain, obliterated thousands of years ago,

and was incurable. Few survived it and there was no treatment. Trying to

stay calm and think, he said, “You and I both know any physician is going

to question being ordered into the quarantine holding area. There’s no way I

could pull it off. Then they’d know two things. I can access any information

I want, and that she’s ill. I sure as hell don’t want them to know the first,

and not sure about the second. What about the med kit?”

A muscle in Trey’s jaw flexed and his crystalline eyes glittered. “The

standard stuff is geared to injuries more than illness, that’s all.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah, fuck.”

They just stood there looking at each other. Trey finally said it. “If

anything happens to her—”

“Don’t,” Larik interrupted savagely, not able to handle the idea of it.

That Aspen with her vibrant beauty, cool poise, and inner sensuality could

possibly die was inconceivable. Normally he could think pretty sensibly

under any circumstances, but the ability eluded him at the moment. He

struggled to collect his thoughts and order them in the usual way. “This isn’t

like the virus.”

“Serious attacks of vomiting. I thought you told me that.”

Think. Concentrate.

A mental inventory of the symptoms ran through his head. “Yes, true,

but she didn’t have a fever yesterday. No elevated white cells. Just the

vomiting. She felt fine later, not worse.” The more he thought about it

logically, the better he felt. “No muscle weakness, no joint pain. With the

virus, by the time the first symptoms appear, it’s supposed to progress

rapidly. If she threw up yesterday morning, she should be dead by now.”

That sent Trey straight into the sleeping quarters at a run, but he

returned a moment later. “Damn it, don’t do that to me again or I will kick

your ass. She’s just sleeping.”

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55

Sleeping. A little sickness in the morning that passed. Not to mention

the out of character sexual eagerness from the very beginning that neither of

them had argued with one bit…a warning bell went off in his mind.

Larik suddenly felt a little weak in the knees and sank down into a chair

at the table. He sat there and shoved his fingers through his hair, not sure if

he wanted to laugh out loud in relief, or faint dead away. “It…well…could

be something else.”

Trey stared at him. “Like what?”

“I suppose she could be pregnant.”

The stupefied look on his friend’s face did extract a small laugh, but the

more Larik thought about it, the more the symptoms fit.

Trey shook his head. “Like all female military personnel, she has a

chip.”

True, all females on assigned duty had a microchip implanted to keep

their hormone levels such so they didn’t have the inconvenience of

menstruation. When and if they wanted to breed, they simply had it

reprogrammed and almost immediately ovulated. It all made sense, Larik

realized. Her unusual sex drive and their heightened desire for her could all

be because she was in a breeding cycle. Despite all the evolution and genetic

engineering, they were still basically animals in the sense males knew

instinctively when a breeding female was available.

“Chips fail.” He frowned. “But more likely, I’d guess, the constant

medical scans could disengage it, switch it over. I believe most females have

theirs checked after each exam. Here, she’s having a scan every single day.

I’m going to bet from that first one, she was set to be impregnated.”

“Oh, hell.” Trey sat down also as if his legs gave way. “Okay, that’s an

interesting complication to an already unusual mission. I didn’t count on

being a father when all was said and done.”

“Could be mine.” Larik cocked a brow.

“Maybe.” Trey didn’t blink an eye. “Either way, we’ll work it out.”

“I hope she isn’t too upset by this. Military female personnel are

required to take extended leave once they breed. The timing in her career is

probably not the best.”

“Yeah, good point. This is our fault essentially, not that we intended it

to happen. I’m just relieved she isn’t actually sick.”

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Annabel Wolfe

They obviously both were. Enough that the responsibility of child was a

serious one, having Aspen be truly ill was a devastating possibility that had

them both in full panic. Larik said slowly, “I’m hoping Kartel will come

through and get us out of this, especially now. I want her off this planet and

back on Minoa for the pregnancy. I don’t like whatever is going on here.”

“Any more interesting notes from Ravenot to that address you can’t

trace?”

Larik grinned and leaned back, folding his arms across his chest. “Who

said I couldn’t trace it?”

Trey lifted his dark brows a little. “You did, just yesterday. I take it that

was what you were up half the night doing? I could hear you muttering

away to yourself. All right, genius boy, who is the chief engineer on Rapt

One sending cryptic messages to anyway?”

He sobered. “It’s coded, not given a user name. That’s the problem. I

looked at first for something that wasn’t there. The address is either pirated

or stolen and reconfigured. But I can give a location when I mole back in

and send my next communication to Kartel. I’m not there yet, but that’s only

because I can’t risk staying in the system for too long.”

“You’re convinced Ravenot is involved?”

“I can’t see how he wouldn’t be. Someone built in that master switch

and he oversaw every aspect of the construction of the station. If he doesn’t

know it’s there, that means he’s negligent and an idiot, and I doubt he’s

either. Rapt One is a prosperous colony and I’d be surprised if he could get

promoted to such a prestigious position if he didn’t know his job. Besides,

he had to be the one to send the set of plans without the switch to both

Aspen and I when we were first consulted to check on the trouble.

Everything looked fine, which is why I decided to come and take a physical

look at the plant. No, he’s guilty as shit.”

Trey rubbed his jaw, his eyes narrowed. “That means you have a built-in

enemy.”

That had already occurred to him more than once. Larik muttered,

“Yeah, I know. What’s worse, it means there someone else out there too

who has a vested interest in keeping us confined as long as possible. One

person does not sabotage a major power station for no good reason, and I

doubt somehow he’d do it on his own. Besides, someone sent those infected

visitors here to start this whole lockdown from the outside. I checked his

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57

personnel records and he hasn’t left here in nearly a year for any reason.

Besides, how does a colony engineer get his hands on a deadly earth strain

of a disease that was wiped from the planet a hell of a long time ago?”

“We’re talking treason here,” Trey said with a grim note to his tone.

“No recourse and no appeal if you’re convicted, a three day grace period

before execution. The switch being there alone might not convince the

Council he plotted against the colony government, but the deliberate

exposure of citizens to a virulent virus is one hell of an argument for his

guilt.”

“He’s got a lot to lose the day we walk out of here.” Larik had come to

that conclusion the minute he spotted the circuit.

“Considering there have already been casualties—which means he and

his conspirators are willing to kill—that makes stepping out that door pretty

damned dangerous.” Trey pointed at the barrier designed to keep them

immune from their suspicious hosts. “If it were just the two of us, I wouldn’t

care so much. But Aspen is a different story. We have to protect her

somehow.”

He privately agreed. “She isn’t going to want to be coddled, Trey. She’s

a military officer. If it comes down to it, she’s probably the most in charge

here.”

“I’m in a different division entirely. I’m not under her command.”

The restive words were easy to interpret. Larik said dryly, “Like hell

you aren’t, and I’m not talking about rank or protocol here.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” His friend shot him an irritated look.

“It means I think you’re in love with her. I’m damned afraid I am too, so

I know the signs.”

The resulting silence hung like a fading star, quiet and poignant. Finally

Trey muttered, “You could be right. I don’t know. I’ve never been

possessive of a female before, but I suppose I do feel that way. It’s hard to

tell. We’re stuck here all together. If we weren’t, would it be different?”

Since the inner struggle was one he had also, Larik could sympathize,

but the truth seemed pretty plain. “I was there when you met her the first

time as we boarded the transport. Sorry, but the look on your face told me

quite a lot.”

“That’s lust. I’m not going to deny it. I wanted to fuck her, but who

wouldn’t? Any breathing male would.”