Your Planet or Mine? (23 page)

If only it could.

“I had better go,” he said after a while, “though I don’t want to.”

“I don’t want you to leave, either.”

“Your grandfather will give me a whipping if he finds me in bed with you in the morning.”

“True. Forget about his wanting to see your spaceship. He’ll be too busy running you off the property.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time. I had to leave the dock pretty quickly that night he came looking for you.” He pushed off the bed, lifting his arms over his head to stretch before going off in search of his scattered clothes. He was gloriously, unselfconsciously naked. Nothing beat watching him pull on his clothes. Well, except watching him take them off.

When he’d dressed, he took a few steps backward, grinning at her as he put a hand on the door handle. “Until the morning, then.”

“Wait.” She hopped out of bed, naked, and he held her close. He kissed her damp hair, his hand circling protectively over her back.

“This was the first time,” he promised her. “It won’t be the last.”

He kissed her again before padding silently back to his bedroom, holding his shoes in his hands.

Jana shut the door and leaned her forehead against the cool wood. After all this time, they were finally lovers. But it had barely whetted her appetite for him. She’d wanted him for too long, whether consciously or unconsciously, for this one short tryst to satisfy. “Gods,” she murmured. And her God, too. She could barely stand. Her thighs trembled. She still throbbed deep inside from little aftershocks of pleasure. She’d be sore in the morning, no doubt about it. The sex, for lack of a better word, had been mind-blowing. Coral polish or no.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, everyone gathered for breakfast around the big kitchen table. Sunshine streamed through the windows.

“Jana, you look unusually refreshed this morning,” Jared noted, stirring sugar into a mug of coffee.

“I feel refreshed.” Jana smiled and pressed her thigh against Cavin’s.

Evie cast a knowing glance in their direction before smearing cream cheese on a bagel. “Nothing like a good night to perk a girl up.”

Thankfully, Jana’s mother appeared oblivious as she made her morning tea.

Grandpa wheeled up to the table with the
Sacramento Sun
in his lap and a cup of coffee. “When I went outside to get the paper, the alarm was off.”

Jana’s face burned. Cavin. He’d gone outside to climb the tree, but he’d left via the hallway.
Yenflarg.

“I distinctly remember turning it on before I went to bed,” he said. “But this morning, it was off.” He opened the paper with a loud snap. “How do you suppose that happened?”

Under the smirking scrutiny of her siblings, Jana shared a bursting look with Cavin before turning her eyes to her cereal. As always, silence was the best defense in this family.

“You weren’t sneaking out to meet a girl, were you, Jared?”

Jared laughed, reminded as they all were of the conversations that had taken place on so many long-ago mornings when Grandpa was tasked with babysitting.

“And you, Evie? Is there a boy?”

“If only,” she said on a sigh.

Jana sneaked a peek at Grandpa. He lifted a brow at her. “Jana?”

“Actually, this time it wasn’t me.”

“Hmm. And you, Larisa?”

Amused by the whole thing, her mother delicately sipped black tea and shook her head.

All eyes went to Cavin, who was hungrily devouring the ham and eggs Jared had prepared for them.

“Cavin? Did you sneak out last night?”

Pale, Cavin swallowed. He looked so endearingly nervous that Jana almost hugged him. “Yes, sir. It was me, sir.”

“Really.” Grandpa rubbed his chin. “Now, what would coax you from a warm bed in the middle of the night?”

Jana spoke up before honest-to-a-fault Cavin did. “Can we change the subject, please? There are children present.”

That induced loud protests from Ellen and John: “We’re teenagers, not kids.”

“Sorry, we’re keeping it a PG-13 level, everyone.” It was bad enough knowing everyone except her niece and nephew could tell by looking at her face what happened last night; she didn’t need it rehashed for the entertainment of her family.

Grandpa went back to his coffee and paper. “If I see any damage in the oak tree, I’ll know it wasn’t a bear.”

Everyone laughed.

Cavin stood and excused himself. Jana gave her family a withering glare. Then she threw down her napkin and followed Cavin out of the kitchen and into the backyard.

He sat on one of the patio benches. Sadie jumped in his lap. “Hey, everyone was just teasing about the alarm,” Jana said. “Believe me, they wouldn’t do it if they didn’t like you so much.”

But as he turned, she glimpsed his pale face and the way he sat, slightly hunched over.

“Oh, no. You’re feeling sick again.”

“It’s been this way for days, Jana. One minute I’m fine, the next, the pain is almost incapacitating.”

She sat down next to him. “Where?”

He gripped his arm above his wrist. “My arm.”

“Maybe the gauntlet’s too tight.”

“No, the pain comes from underneath, where the biocomputer implant interfaces with the gauntlet. Under the gauntlet, embedded in my forearm, is the command center for all my biocomputers.”

Jana pictured a bloody piece of machinery buried in his arm and fought a wave of queasiness.

He rubbed the side of his head. “But this is new—now when my arm aches, my head does, too.”

“More bioimplants?” she asked, fighting panic.

“Yes. For my translator and other functions. I also have corneal implants for enhanced night vision, but so far, my eyes are fine.”

“So far?” Something was very wrong. His internal medicines should have healed him by now. He shouldn’t be breaking down. They’d both known he wasn’t operating at a hundred percent, but she wasn’t aware it was this bad. And his eyes could be affected next. The thought that he could go blind freaked her out.

He took her hand and studied her fingers clasped with his. “Before we arrive at Area 51, I’ll brief you on my plan—how to accomplish it, every detail, so you’ll know what to do in case I can’t complete the mission.”

“You’re going to be fine.”

“And if I am not, Jana? What then?”

Mute, she shook her head. As a senator, she juggled life-or-death decisions with infinite composure, yet when it came to Cavin, the idea of losing him all but paralyzed her.

“Then everything I’ve come here to do is ended? Everything I risked to save you and your world is for nothing?”

“No,” she whispered. But she’d thought they were in this together. Going it alone was not in the plan. It hit her that she’d become awfully brave the past few days, except not where it concerned Cavin. But she forced herself to reassure him if only because he seemed to need her cooperation so desperately. “I’ll learn what you want me to know. I’ll do it.”

“Is everything okay out here?”

Jana turned to see her family clustered by the door. “Cavin’s just told me a few things I wasn’t aware of.” She twined her fingers with his. “If we’re going to band together to save the world, we may have less time than we think. We’d better get on out there and see that ship.”

C
AVIN HAD
J
ARED
drive Jana, Jana’s grandfather and her sister out to the wreckage of the ship. Jana’s mother stayed behind to make sure Evie’s children didn’t come along.

Cavin was disturbed to see his condition had worsened overnight. He controlled his outward reaction to the aches in his arm and his head, which went without warning from nearly no pain at all to searing, teeth-crushing jolts. And this morning, when he woke, his vision had dimmed briefly. He couldn’t explain what was happening to his body, but it always began in the gauntlet interface embedded in his forearm and spread from there. If he had to, he’d rid himself of the implant like a snurrefox gnawed off its leg to escape a trap. Nothing would keep him from completing his mission. Not even death, for Jana was now briefed on the procedure to use in the scout ship. She wouldn’t be prepared for all contingencies, however. He’d simply have to hope there were none.

“Here,” he told her brother when they reached the crash site. Scars gouged the muddy fields. Several trees were snapped in half. Branches were scattered over the ground. He’d left the area in worse shape than he remembered. Then again, he had been a bit dazed at the time, his only thought to reach Jana as soon as possible.

Jared wheeled his grandfather over the uneven ground. “I don’t know how you didn’t hear this, Grandpa.”

“The crash happened a good mile from the house,” Jana’s grandfather answered. “We probably did hear it, and attributed it to something else.”

“It looks like it was a spectacular landing,” Evie remarked, looking around at the uprooted undergrowth.

“Not so spectacular.” Cavin winced.

Jared grinned. “Hey, pal, any landing you walk away from is a good landing.”

Cavin chuckled and rested his fingers on Jana’s back as they trekked to the ship. He longed to hold her close, but with her family surrounding them, knew he must content himself with casual touches for now. “Stop here,” he said when they reached the site. The Jaspers clustered around him. “Don’t you see it?” he asked them.

Everyone squinted into the field. “No,” Jana said. “It’s really here?”

“Stretch out your arms, like this. He extended his arm and carefully walked forward. With a muted thump, his hand hit the fuselage. That was a crowd pleaser, he thought, watching the wonder in their faces and especially in Jana’s. They joined him and flattened their hands on the outer walls of the invisible ship.

“Now step back and I will make it appear.”

The transport vessel shimmered to life to a chorus of
oohs
and
ahs.

As the family walked around the ship, exploring it, Jared snapped photos on a digital camera, capturing it from every angle. He stood back and admired the craft. “I’d give my right testicle to fly this puppy.”

“Save your testicle for something better,” Cavin said.

“Haven’t found her yet. But this…call me in love.” Jared swept his hand over the fuselage in clear wonder.

“What I mean is that this transport is considered an ugly craft by Coalition standards. But not so the craft that followed me here.” A beauty, the REEF’s ship still sat, invisible, at the end of a deep gouge in the fields not too far from the transport. “Now that might have been worth sacrificing a testicle for—had it not crashed.”

Evie said out the corner of her mouth to Jana, “I can’t decide if it’s comforting or oddly disturbing that even men from other worlds pepper their conversations with references to their male parts.”

Cavin smiled. He wasn’t sure Evie was convinced of his intentions for her sister—she didn’t seem to be too enamored of the male species in general after being hurt by her divorce, according to what Jana said—but he and Jana’s pilot brother had gotten along from the start.

“Let’s go see that other crashed ship,” Jared proposed to Cavin in a private tone while the family explored the outside of the transport.

“Not while its pilot is missing. I won’t risk disturbing the craft and setting off a security warning he might detect.”

“Understood.”

“How about a tour of my cockpit?”

Jared’s eyes sparked with delight. “I’m there. Let’s go.”

“Wait.” Cavin lowered his voice so neither Jana or her family could overhear the conversation. He’d tell her soon enough, but he didn’t want to distress her in front of her family. “Later, we’ll return to the ship, alone. I will show you how to power it up. Not for sport, but because I need your help in this mission.”

Jared had turned serious. “You got it.”

“When I leave with Jana for the base, I want you to stand guard in my spaceship—inside in the pilot’s seat. You’ll be on alert possibly for several days.”

Jared answered with a curt nod. “Whatever you need, bro.”

“You’re my backup if we don’t make it to the Roswell ship. On my command or, in the event I am no longer alive, Jana’s, you’re to power up my ship. It will create a signal that Coalition sensors will pick up, giving them pause. They’ll be less eager to invade a planet they think might have space-capable weapons.” He knew that Jared’s one lonely signal wouldn’t seem like much to the fleet, but if all else was lost, the last-ditch effort would buy Earth a little more time, whether it be another day or a month. Who knew what miracle might be performed in that time?

“Why not use your ship in the first place?” Jana asked.

The men jumped. Jana had been listening all along and so quietly that he hadn’t noticed her presence. It seemed he’d underestimated her ability to plan calmly. It was only when it came to his health that she grew more emotional. He couldn’t say anyone had ever cared that much for him, not even his father. Gods, he loved her.

“I kind of like the idea of working from home,” she continued.

“My transport can only produce a single signal, not the battle force of false signals I need to deter the fleet. The same goes for the REEF’s crashed ship. Both are modern craft, built with codes to prevent hacking, but the Roswell ship is much older and has no such firewalls.”

He glanced at the sun. It was growing late. Another day almost gone and he was no closer to saving this world. Did things always move so slowly here? And he’d thought the Coalition Parliament was a bureaucratic nightmare.

He lifted his arm toward the ship. “Stand back. I am about to return the ship to its state of invisibility.”

“All he needs is a rabbit and a beautiful assistant,” Evie said, “and David Copperfield will be out of business.”

Cavin looked to Jana for a translation. “Copperfield is a magician,” she explained. “He creates illusions for entertainment. Magic, it’s commonly called.”

Jana watched her family take their last looks at the ship before he returned it to invisibility. “When I was in school, I had a teacher. Her name was Miss Richards. She told me there was no such thing as magic. She said it was just how people explained what they didn’t understand.” Jana came up on her toes, her hand curving around his cheek, and kissed him lightly on the lips. “She was wrong. Magic is so much more. You taught me that.” She moved close to whisper in his ear, “And last night proved it.”

He closed his eyes with the feel of her warm breath against his skin. His fingers drifted up her back, settling in the curve of her spine. It was easy to remember how it felt making love to her. He inhaled her scent, trembling with the effort of keeping control, of his body, of his emotions. Then he realized where he was, and who he was with, and jumped away from Jana.

As he feared, her family was watching: her brother and sister smiling, her grandfather glowering fiercely. “Far Star, I’ll have no more of that.”

Cavin snapped to attention. “Sorry, sir.”

“I mean, no more being afraid to touch her. My granddaughter’s finally chosen a worthy man, and a man worthy of her. I’ll not have you starving for each other’s affection out of fear of angering an old man.” With a grunt of exasperation, he turned back to the ship to run a veined, trembling hand over the gleaming luranium hull before the transport disappeared in a glittering shower of light.

Cavin was struck by the symbolism of the sight. The ship’s advanced construction, the elderly man’s hand: it encapsulated his past and his future, a future that might never be unless the Earthlings got him to where he needed to go before his body gave out on them.

T
HE PHONE
in the library rang. The private line. Grandpa wheeled across the room and answered the call. “About time you called me back.”
Mahoney,
he mouthed, giving them a thumbs-up, then putting the call on speakerphone so everyone could hear.

Jana, Cavin and Jared leaned forward in their chairs.

The general sounded jovial. “Jake, long time no hear!”

The two elderly men exchanged the usual pleasantries about families and the weather then Grandpa got right to point: “All those years you told me there was no alien spacecraft at Groom Lake you were mighty convincing. Hell, I even believed you. Now I know you’re a goddamn liar.”

Jana threw her face in her hands.

But Mahoney laughed heartily. “Let me guess—an alien landed in your backyard.”

“As a matter of fact, he did!”

“And he told you he came back to pick up the ship he left behind in 1947.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. It’s ours to keep, a scout ship, he says, a throwaway, but he needs to use it first to deter a massive alien invasion force on the way to Earth as we speak.”

Silence. “You been drinking, Jake?”

“No, I haven’t been drinking. I’m not playing a practical joke, either. Listen to me, Chet. As hard as it is to believe, space invaders are on the way. But our extraterrestrial visitor, a damn hero if you ask me, knows how to rig that ship you’re hiding there at Dreamland to send them away. He has a plan. We don’t have much time. You need to get with the current leadership and get him clearance inside. Right away. A Colonel Thomas Connick, right? Tell him our boy’s got a job to do.”

“There is no alien ship at Area 51, Jake. There never was. I didn’t lie to you about that.”

“They didn’t call you Baloney Mahoney for nothing. Chet, your own people gave you the name. Your fellow soldiers.”

Cavin sat hunched over with his hands laced together and his index fingers pressed to his lips. His expression was dark, worried.

“I have proof. Once you see the photos, you’ll believe me.”

“Jake, proof or not, there’s no alien ship parked at Area 51.”

“Bullshit.” Grandpa’s face was increasingly pink and in danger of turning red.

“Your pressure,” Mom warned.

It took some effort, but he tried to calm down. “I know you’re wondering how it is that this extraterrestrial came to me out of all the men in the world. See, he’s in love with my granddaughter. At great personal risk he came here to warn her—to warn all of us—that his people plan to invade Earth.”

“Jake, who is he? A stranger. A con artist. He’s taking advantage of an old man—a man who was always too much of an idealist for his own good.”

Jana stood, unable to take any more of the back-and-forth. Unable to bear any more of Cavin’s building frustration over the general’s skepticism. “Give me the phone, Grandpa.”

“Idealist? Not this time, Mahoney. Not this time.”

“Grandpa, please.” She thrust her hand at him.

Admittedly, he looked a little worried surrendering the phone.
I won’t yell,
she mouthed. “Hi, General. This is Jana Jasper. Let’s dispense with the pleasantries, in light of this national emergency.” It was a worldwide emergency, but the general was a very patriotic man. The U.S.A. was a good place to start. “We need to talk. Better yet, I need you to listen. There is no con artist. No one trying to fool my grandfather—or me. This alien is for real. I’ve seen his spaceship. I’ve seen his weapons and computers.”

“You’ve seen a spacecraft—an
alien
spacecraft?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve touched it.”

Silence. Then a “hmmph.”

“I have digital photos. I’m going to send them to you now, sir. I understand you receive e-mail photos of your grandchildren all the time, so you’ll know what to do.” She wouldn’t reveal Cavin’s identity, but there was nothing wrong with photos of the crashed ship. Grandpa had slipped up and said where it was parked, but the few digital pictures they’d taken that morning of the ship showed no identifying landmarks linking them to the ranch. “Do it,” she whispered to Jared.

By the time he hit Send on the laptop, Jana was almost giddy with nerves. Another irreversible step: the photos were on their way. “They should be arriving in your in-box any minute now, sir. I’d like you to look at them and then tell me there’s no spacecraft at Area 51.”

“This is no spacecraft there, Jana. I’m sorry to say. That’s an urban legend. One we never could kill.”

She sighed.
Baloney
. “You’re the founding father of the place. The original commander. If anyone knows what’s there, and what’s still there, it’s you, sir. If you say there’s no spaceship, I have no choice but to believe you. However, if you know where we might find such a ship, I sure would appreciate you telling me. Blindfold us and bring us there, for all we care. We need access to that craft—and fast. Please help me in this.”

Jana put everything she had into her plea, her whole heart. “All I’ve ever wanted is a political career. Public service, doing good, it’s all I’ve wanted my whole life. I’m willing to sacrifice everything for this, General. I’m staking my reputation on it.” Or what was left of her reputation. “If it means the end of my career, so be it. That’s how strongly I feel about the accuracy of this information. Earth is in terrible danger. Along with a very special extraterrestrial hero, I’m going to save our planet. To do that, I need your help, your unique insider knowledge. A chance like this comes along once in history. Once. Are you with us?”

Grandpa snatched the phone from her, midspeech, just when her gift of gab was warming up, when instinct told her she might be getting through to the crusty old general. “Call me when you open your e-mail, Chet. It might jog your worthless memory about that goddamn ship.” He returned the phone to its cradle with a crash.