I take the sandwich out of the replicator and open it up hopefully. There’s a greyish, meat-like protein in there, squished between two slices of hard bread – with a slime of white sauce to help choke it down. I take a bite. It’s bland, thankfully, but not nearly as bad as it looks.
New replicators are almost as good as a personal chef, but I can’t complain about this meal. If The Instigator was a new ship, there’d be no way for us to escape tonight.
It all relies on Theme holding under the pressure.
I know he will.
I just have to get us down the hallway and to the control room without being spotted. The bulk of the Aurelians won’t be back from their daily battles until later, and unless we have a stroke of bad luck, we’ll get there smoothly. The control room houses a collection of servers and AI processors and it won’t be guarded. Aelon isn’t expecting an attack from within his own ship.
I’m antsy. I want to go see Sawoot, but a captain cannot allow their crew to see them weak and stressed. I need to project confidence. Besides, there’s nothing more to discuss. The plan is solid. It’s just going to take a little luck to pull off. Luck, combined with Theme’s computer skills, and Sawoot’s seduction abilities.
That, I know she has down pat. Garrick and his triad might have treated me like a piece of furniture, but I’ve seen a few longing glances thrown in her direction. I know Sawoot can play men like a fiddle, and she’s done so constantly over the years.
She could get the roughest-looking bastards eating out of her hand with one flutter of her long eyelashes. I once saw a street brawler with a nose that had been broken at least three times break down and cry when we left a particular backwater space station; convinced that Sawoot was the love of his life, when he’d been little more than an entertaining distraction for her.
Garrick might be gallant, but he won’t be able to resist her charms when he realizes she wants him as badly as his triad want her.
And so, I wait.
I meditate. I stretch. I do yoga. The seconds tick by. My own emotions match Vinicus and Iunia’s impatience.
As the hours pass, I experiment with the Bond and test our auras, experimenting with how faint I can make them. I can block the three Aurelians out almost entirely, until there’s just a vague awareness that they exist within my mind and not much more.
If I’m right, this means that it’s going to be hard for them to track us – even with our telepathic Bond.
I finally stop fiddling with the Bond, not wanting to attract any attention from the Aurelians. As long as they don’t suspect anything for one more day, nothing else will matter.
I sit perfectly still in my room, but time keeps moving. That’s what it does best. In the end, it makes us all equal. I can’t help but feel like I’ve won a hand of cards against time itself by earning the thousands of years of extra life granted by the Bond.
Time might always win the war in the end, but I’ll have thousands of years to experience more of it.
I’m used to being chased, so I can handle the thought of three more men after me. I guess I’ll now have triad after triad attempting to bring me in – either from Aurelian Law Enforcement, to arrest me for my theft of those Orbs, or from The instigator, tasked with bringing me to my Bonded triad.
The Aurelian species was dying for tens of thousands of years before the Bond became active again, and only now are they gaining in numbers again. As a result, traditionally minded Aurelians will view it as their duty to bring me back to Captain Aelon and his battle-brothers, even if I’m kicking and screaming as they do so.
Is that how they would view me, if I stayed with them? Just a mating tool? A breeding sow? Just a way to reproduce? I want to be more than that. I want to be more than just a possession, to be used.
Once again, I explore the men’s auras.
Vinicus is… surprisingly complex. I thought he was a base beast, but now I have a window into his mind, I find there’s far more to him. He doesn’t speak much, and he doesn’t have the dry intellect of Iunia, but Vinicus has a stoic demeanor. Whatever comes to him, comes – and he accepts it without complaint. He’s prepared for everything. Of the three, he’s the happiest, and I know what sparks that joy deep within his aura.
It’s me.
It’s the Bond. I feel guilty that I’m going to rip his heart out.
It’s almost 20h00 now, standard time. The Aurelian home world of Colossus has days of nearly identical length to Old-Earth, and so the twenty-four code of timekeeping has become recognized as standard time. It’s used for interstellar space travel even if you’re orbiting a planet with forty-hour days.
Sawoot will be enticing Garrick and his men into her room now. She’s probably looking up at him right now, giving him doe eyes and thanking him from the heart for saving her. I truly hope she’s Bonded to them, even though it would be an impossibly unlikely coincidence. The Bond might be more common now than ever before, but to have two Bonds formed on the same ship would be an astronomical twist of luck.
Sawoot is busy. I think of Theme. He’s probably puking out his guts from anxiety right now. My own stomach is uneasy, and it’s not from the sandwich.
I take a deep breath. It’s time.
As soon as I decide that, my mind clears.
When you go from thinking to doing, everything suddenly becomes simple.
I get up and open
