PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY
An AU Battle of the Planets/Star Blazers crossover
By Frederick P. Kopetz
Inspired by Yuki Wildstar and Gail (Fluffy) Kopetz.
CHAPTER FIVE: EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW….
I. THE THOUGHTS OF A MAN ABOUT TO DIE…
Cockpit: Spectran Missile
Planet Riga
November 22, 2221
Unknown Time
Time passed, but many things changed for G-Force.
Colonel Cronus of Riga, who had revealed himself to Mark “Anderson” of G-Force as his father, had just said farewell.
He was cruising the X-1 manned missile on Riga to attempt to stop the Van Allen Belt Hyper-Project of Spectra.
Zoltar’s scheme was demented yet simple. Cause an explosion to damage the Van Allen belts of Riga, and then…open a wormhole and warp the shock waves through hyperspace to Earth, finishing the job of destroying that planet’s Van Allen Belts. A simple scheme that would destroy two worlds at once…as the war between Spectra and Earth had escalated.
Cronus sat reciting his final thoughts into the Missile’s flight recorder as it cruised through the Rigan Eastern Sea. His ruminations, found years later, after Riga’s destruction a few weeks later, went like this:
Mark….my Son….
This is being recited in the hopes that perhaps you will find this message.
I finally told you the truth. Or most of it. I told you that I am your father. The father who had to abandon the name of Kenjiro Washio, and his wife, Tina, when you were four. Why?
Because Chief Anderson forced me to go underground. Because I had to discard my name; even my face, to infiltrate society here on Riga, which had become our most recent ally in the growing Alliance.
Mark, if only I had had more time….I wish I could have told you the full truth of where you came from.
Because you would never, ever believe it.
You were raised, Mark, by me, by Tina, who died of a broken heart soon after I left, by the authorities in the orphanage…and by…damn him, Anderson.
Anderson. It all comes down to him and his secret schemes and projects.
Anderson.
Because of him, I had to leave you. Because of him, the mother who raised you died, and now lies as a pile of rotting bones in a nearly-forgotten grave in a Catholic cemetery in Northern California. Buried, of course, by Anderson.
But, because of him, and because of the connivance of Earth Defense…you never knew your true parents.
The womb of Tina Washio nurtured you. She labored in her sweat and pain and nakedness to give birth to you.
But, the womb of Tina Washio is not where you were conceived. You were implanted there; taken from your mother of conception in 2203, eight and a half months before you were born in January 2204, Mark. Taken because yours was a tubal pregnancy. Decades ago, you would have just died there, a theraputic abortion. Luckily, our science has surpassed the need, for the most part, for such barbaric operations, and you could simply have been moved down a few centimeters, and safely and easily re-implanted in the womb of the woman who should have borne you in the first place. The woman….
Anderson, damn you, you never even told me who she was. You said it would be ‘inconvenient’ and that this poor woman could not be ***allowed*** to be pregnant at that time due to a matter of ‘grave interplantary security’
Your true mother never got to hold you or nurse you or change your diapers. Your true father never got to play with you. In fact, I am told that your mother was never even aware she was pregnant, and was never even told. She was told her brief hospital stay, and the brief recovery she was allowed, was for ‘examination and treatment of a Fallopian cyst’. I am told she was deployed three weeks after the operation with her husband, happy (or as happy as someone on Earth Defense Deployment can be) and unaware that she was even carrying you.
Tina and I wanted a child. We had considered in-vito fertilization. Then, when you were in the hospital being evaluated, Anderson came to us with a bargain; would you become a surrogate mother for a baby already conceived and caught as a tubal pregnancy in the womb of an otherwise young, healthy woman who had to, for security reasons, give up her child as a donor?
We agreed to this bargain. We were never told who the father and mother were and never even saw them. She was on the surgical floor of Central Hospital; you, Tina, were in Maternity.
Tina saw your mother…your true mother, very briefly, right as she went under. She was not supposed to see her…she was on the other side of a divider and the view she got of her sleeping face was accidental. Tina told me that the sight of that haunting, pale face and that blond hair was one of the most bizarre memories of her life….Tina said that if she had truly seen who she thought she had seen…that you, Mark, had and would have had a very exceptional mother..and father..
I just found out myself…by stealing records. Stolen right from under Anderson’s Goddamn stinking mustachioed nose!
Mark…if you had been allowed to stay with your true parents….
…you would have led a life, not of lower middle-class poverty, poverty in an orphanage, and a dorm room, but a life of upper-middle class privilege and relative safety as the son of two of the most famous people on Earth, high in the military echelons. You would have had your own room, a family, a pool, brothers and sisters, and occassional spurts of adventure and space travel on at least twelve other worlds and all over the Globe before you would have entered the Academy at a proper age….
…and your last name would be different…Mark….but it is so obvious, isn’t it?
The name of your true father is written in your face. In your hair. In those eyebrows and your burning eyes.
I know whose son you truly are. And you must know, too….
I can say no more…I…have sent copies of my findings to your true parents, in secret, through Rigan channels that may take weeks to reach them…..
Then, the truth will not die with me…
II. A DEEP SADNESS
ISO Special Missions Gunship Phoenix
Earth Orbit
April 23rd, 2222
0730 Hours: Utoland/West Coast NorthAM Time
Mark, of G-Force, sat demoralized in his command chair in his white Birdstyle as he remembered all of the events of the past few months….as the war stretched on….especially those of the past few days.
….it had happened far too fast for him to comprehend.
He thought, First, Jason rescued that girl named Tyna from the Robotoids. But she turned out to be a Spectran agent. We went to this mansion, and I don’t know where that damn Zark gets his intelligence from, she ended up nice and dead in there….but that was not the worst of it….Then, the last mission? That amusement park. Princess, you meant well, but when you lost your shoe…that set in motion more events, and….
Mark sat in thought as he lay back and said to himself. And then, there was what happened to Cronus. Or, should I say…my father?
Tears ran down his cheeks as he considered his father’s fate.
Very, very bitter tears.
Then, Zark’s voice chimed in. “Commander! Mark! Anderson wants a report!”
“7-Zark-7, go to HELL!” snapped Mark.
“Are you sad about your friend Colonel Cronus?” Zark said in a voice that sounded very patronizing.
“He was more than my friend, you fucking pile of bolts! He was my FATHER!” Mark snapped.
“I will have to report this to Chief Anderson,” said Zark as the rest of the Team looked at Mark, utterly aghast.
“Go report whatever the hell you want!” yelled Mark as he snapped off the comm circuit at his end and glared at Jason and Princess.
“I don’t think this is a good time to ask Princess if she wrote her name in her shoe, yet,” said Keyop. “Remember yesterday? Her running away from Jill’s Place?”
“No, it’s not!” Princess snapped.
“What do you mean it’s not?” said Tiny. “We got those other sixteen year old girls out of that bogus Beauty Center that ended up being a mammoth…”
Keyop grinned evilly, winked at Princess and he purposely stuttered as he said, “Breep, boop…Mammoth poop!”
Mark sat snarling, until he remembered, Oh, yeah, Princess….we made up a little gift for you. I’ll give it back to you when we get back to Center Neptune.
Tiny got a stupid look on his face, and he put some music on the Phoenix’s sound system; namely, “The Theme From the Monkees” He turned up the sound system as the lyrics, “Here We Come…walkin’ down the street….get the funniest looks from…everyone we meet…” A drum roll came, but Mark shut off the sound system and said, “Tiny, shove it up your ass!”
“What do ya mean shove it up my ass?” said Tiny.
“Your stupid music!” yelled Mark.
“Hey, Big Ten,” said Jason. “Mark, get off his case!”
“So what?” yelled Mark. “My father’s dead, we get into these asinine missions….”
“The war goes on,” said Jason. “Oh, my horse, my horse, my Kingdom for a Super Bird Missile…”
“What’s that?” said Tiny.
“It’s shit!” yelled Jason. “Just like the shit in your head, Mark!”
“The shit in my head?” yelled Mark. “What about the shit in your head, Jason?”
“You two stop it!” yelled Princess as she got up and stood between them.
“Oh, let’s land this thing at Center Neptune and go home,” said Tiny. “I wanna space burger…”
Our current location is off the coast of South America, said an anonymous voice over the speakers of Center Neptune. ETA off Utoland three days at our current course, heading, and speed….
Princess
lay in her room moping in her civvies with the number “3” on her T-shirt. She had
kicked off her shoes, and had tried painting her toenails pink to see if it
would boost her spirits.
It was not working.
If anything, Princess was more depressed than ever.
“Mark, why won’t you open up to me?” she said out loud. “You’re full of your own rage over losing your father…sometimes you let me in a little…sometimes, only sometimes…”
She went to her own sound system and began to run through songs. Finally, she found another song by the ancient band The Monkees that seemed to fit her situation.
It was, “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone.” She put on the song and turned it up, tapping her bedspread a little with her fingers and toes as she sang along with the song….
“Mark, this is how I feel right now…please get your head out of being the Eagle and come and comfort your damned Swan….” she whispered as she again began to sing,
When Princess remembered the song was about a high-class girl, she said,
When I first met you girl you didn’t have no shoes…
Now you’re walkin’ round like you’re front page news….
“Damn music!” Princess yelled, ejecting the data cartridge and throwing it under the bed. Then, she threw one of her new shoes under the bed, too.
Then, she threw herself on her bed and began to cry like crazy.
At the moment, the door whizzed open.
She yelled, “Would you leave me the hell ALONE? All I’m being reminded of is what an idiot I am for losing my shoe, and…”
“Hey, Princess,” said Mark. He was smiling and holding something behind his back.
“Oh, Mark. Hi. Yeah. You’re here to yell at me again?” she sniffed. “If you are…”
“Hey, Princess. Truce. Truce. Truce. I’m not here to yell at you at all.”
“You’re not?”
Mark shook his head as he sat on the bed. “In fact, I have a present for you. Now, granted, it was made up through the intervention of a woman we are all somewhat familiar with but….come here and sit on my lap.”
Princess did so, even as she said, “Mark, are you sure this is not some sort of joke?”
“No, Princess. It’s not.”
“Then, what’s in the box?”
“A new
pair of shoes for you.”
“A new pair of…shoes?”
Princess opened the box, and inside the box…there was a new pair of shoes, alll right. Namely, hot pink platform sandals.
“Do you like these? You’ll need something a little different on with your civvies, with spring and summer coming up. The lady who had ISO make these up said they’re the lastest style, Princess…”
“They’re…cute,” said Princess. “But do they turn into my Birdstyle boots when I transmute?”
“They sure do,” grinned Mark. He slipped one on her foot. “And you see, they buckle on. Kind of hard to lose if they’re buckled onto those cute feet…’
Mark buckled the one on her foot as Princess wiggled her toes up in the sandal. “It feels nice!”
“Allow me to do the right foot,” said Mark. He put it on her, and tickled her foot right before puttting it on. “Mark!” she said with a blush.
Mark laughed at her reaction. “How’s that fit? Go stand up in your shoes…”
Slightly disappointed, Princess stood up, walked around a little, and said, “The heel has some height to it, but they feel good. Who made these up?”
“A certain Doctor who sometimes works with ISO,” said Mark. “When she showed up the other day, she had on a pair herself…”
Princess transmuted, discovering that her sandals turned nicely into the Swan’s boots in G-3 mode. She transmuted back to civvies and plopped on the bed beside Mark.
“Can I thnk you for these, Commander?” she said.
“You sure can,” he replied.
Princess smiled at Mark, and she put her arms around him.
A moment later, Mark was pleased and surprised to find that she was kissing him.
He was unsure of what to do, and it showed. “Uhh…what do I do?”
Princess said, “When a pretty girl kisses you, Mark…you’re supposed to kiss back. Especially if you…like her?”
Mark smiled, took Princess in his arms...
…and he began to kiss back.
The kiss went on and on as Princess climbed into Mark’s lap.
Before Mark knew what was happening, he felt Princess’ hands going up his shirt….
Unsure of what she’d so, Mark reciprocated by putting his hands up her t-shirt…touching her navel as they kissed again, as she whispered, “There’s something I’ve always wanted to tell you, Mark…”
“Yes, Princess?”
“I….I…” she said as his hands went way up her shirt, momentarily touching her breast.
To his delight, (and to Princess’ delight and shock), he found she was not wearing a bra. To Princess’ delight, his finger touch on her nipples felt good…very, very good…and….
“What was that you wanted to say, Princess?” Mark said again as they kissed.
“It’s just…that I…:”
Then, an alarm went off in the base. “Attention, all hands…attention, all hands,” said Zark’s voice over the PA. “Object from orbit spotted re-entering over Chile….G-Force to the Phoenix, Commander, please respond with a Bird Scramble! Repeat, G-Force to the…”
“ohhhhh!” snapped Princess as she got her hands out of Mark’s shirt.
“Yeah….Big Ten…likewise,” snapped Mark. “On my mark…Transmute!”
Both members of G-Force changed from civvies to their Birdstyles in a moment. Then, Mark said, “Let’s get to the Phoenix before…anyone…notices…”
“Right,” said Princess, who thought, Another thirty minutes! Damn! Another thirty minutes and…who knows?
You can do a lot with the guy you love in thirty minutes…and I thought he was about to say it!
III. SECRETS REVEALED
The Tokyo Megalopolis
The Wildstar Residence
April 24th, 2222
2245 Hours: Earth Standard Space-Time
Time passed on Earth.
The Phoenix completed its mission, which was to attack two smaller Spectran Command Ships; familiar ugly vessels of the same bat-like design they had been using for years, before they completed a call for six Spectran Frigates.
Later, during a long strategy session with Anderson, Zark, and the whole team around noon on the 24th, Princess admitted they had picked up telemetry indicating that the Spectran Captain in one of the command ships had ben about to order the Frigates to attack the EDF spacecraft carrier Ark Royal, which had been on patrol in the area.
Anderson went all colors when he heard this. “This is an escalation of the war! Now they want to attack our capital ships?”
“Yes…just like they tried years ago, I understand,” said Mark. “Those attacks ended around the time that Defense Minister Ainsley was killed. Was it true that Zoltar was actually chased to one of our allied planets?”
“That’s classified,” said Anderson. “But, yes, I can tell you that…years ago…we almost had Zoltar. The officers on the scene were about to get him with extreme prejudice.”
“We were that close to killing the bastard?” said Jason.
Anderson nodded.
“Then what else about the past are you not telling us?” Princess said.
“There are…some things…but…you don’t need to know them right now,” said Anderson.
“Such as?” demanded Mark.
Anderson kept quiet at that.
In the meantime, in the Tokyo Megalopolis, it was now about somewhere between 10 PM and 11 PM local time.
At the Wildstar residence, Nova Wildstar told her husband, Admiral Derek Wildstar, to answer a doorbell that suddenly went off/
So, Admiral Wildstar stepped out into the thunderstorm to find a large package on their doorstep.
Nova stepped out in her house slippers and old slacks in the rain and cold to watch Derek. “What’s that?” she cried.
“Some package…the writing on it is Rigan!”
“Rigan?” Nova said with raised eyebrows. Derek dragged in the package and slammed the door as lightning and thunder blew off outside.
“Are the kids asleep?” Derek snapped.
“Annie helped me tuck them in,” Nova said, referring to their live-in nanny. “Derek, don’t just go and open that….it should be sniffed first.”
“Yeah, it could be a bomb…or gas…or anthrax…or the Rigan Croup,” Derek said. He picked up the package and shook it. “It’s addressed to us, in Standard English and Japanese above the alien writing. And I hear heavy stuff in this envelope. Feels like..folders?”
“Be right back,” Nova said. She came back a moment later with a heavy suitcase that Derek had to help her with. They occassionally got bizarre packages, so the EDF had provided them with a portable explosive and bio-hazard scanner that would pick up most common terrorist bombs or germ or virus laden packages. They had actually gotten a few such nasty packages over the years from their enemies, with one direct from Zoltar a few weeks ago. The sniffer had picked up Trionite-5B, a common Spectran explosive. They had called the EDF Marine Bomb Squad at once for that one.
Derek helped Nova plug in and set up the portable scanner. Looking a little bizarre in their sweaters, old slacks, and house slippers, Derek held up the package while Nova scanned it with a wand from different angles and punched in some codes for the computer to analyze the package. “The computer says it’s clean, Derek,” Nova said.
“Do you trust that thing?” he said.
“Sort of,” Nova said. “I’m doing an imaging scan on it now. Nothing in here but…files?”
“Files?” Derek said.
“Look at the image. These are someone’s EDF Hospital charts,” Nova said. “I think they’re safe.”
“I hope so,” Derek said.
“Let me get a steak knife,” Nova said as more thunder went off outside. Lightning flashed in the windows of the house as Nova ran into the kitchen for an ordinary steak knife. She cut open the tape holding the package and carefully opened it, hoping no powder or liquid that the scanner had not picked up would come out.
The package contained two large hospital charts, from 2203. “Derek, these were stolen from Central Hospital…the confidential file room.”
“Confidential?” Derek said.
“Even I don’t have the clearance to just waltz in there, Derek…” Nova said. “My God…look,” she said. “One name on the chart….Ens. Tina Washio?”
Some thunder went off, followed by lightning. “The last name sounds familiar,” Derek said.
“Mark…of G-Force…his original last name was Washio, Derek. That was before Chief Anderson adopted him and became his guardian back in late 2208.”
“You said there were two charts…who’s chart is the other…?”
Nova lifted out the other chart and turned it over, starting at the name.”Derek, look! Look at that!”
Lightning went off. “Nova….I was a little blinded…whose…” Derek then looked. “YOURS?”
“Lt. Commander Nova Wildstar,” Nova intoned softly. “This is my chart! They never let me see it when I was in the hospital that time…and I wanted to see it!”
“The date?” Derek said.
“March of
2203. Right after the Rikasha Incident,” Nova said. “That time I was….in the
hospital…”
“Yeah, with a Fallopian Cyst. That thing made you as sick as a dog for nearly a
month…good thing you recovered….”
Nova opened her chart and began reading her symptoms. “Nothing exceptional here….I don’t know why I was given this….or why there are classification seals all over….” Nova then stopped. She looked horrified as she read out loud, in a rage-filled whisper, “Patient not to be told diagonsis based on CAT-R Scan taken on 3/29/03 under any circumstances….matter is to be classified per EDF reg 453-2 and ISO Directive 432-c….as signed off on by Stone, E.T.J., Major-General, Anderson, James B, PhD, PsyD, and officer’s ultimate line Commanding Officer….what, Derek? Did you…?”
“Know about what?” Derek snapped.
“Don’t you dare deny it, Derek, what in the hell were you hiding from….?” Nova read on, horrified, not letting Derek look at the pages.
“Nova, what are you…?”
”You know damn well what you did, Derek!” Nova screamed. “Ectopic Pregnancy…Lt. Commander Wildstar…Command decision….Resection and relocation op of fetus, not viable but 85% probable implant…not be done inside patient, planetary security….patient needed for Rikasha reconstruction on Cosmo-DNA….mission critical, patient not to be pregnant at this time…commmand decision, COMMAND DECISION! Removal operation to be done, patient and fetus to be considered donors for Beta Five Project! DONOR! MY CHILD WAS A DONOR?” Nova screamed in a voice that was hysterical.
“Nova, I…I had nothing to do with this…I..” Derek pleaded.
“FUCK YOU!” Nova yelled in the worst rage against him Derek had ever seen. “You were my Commander! They TOLD YOU! YOU CONSENTED!”
“Consented to what?” Derek said as he tried to hug her.
Nova railed off and slapped Derek violently against the face. “Don’t you FUCKING touch me, you Nazi Eugenecist!” Nova screamed. “Did you marry me because you were looking at Alex, Ariel, Stephen, Anastsia, and Teresa as experiments too?”
“Nova, they NEVER TOLD ME EITHER!” Derek yelled, grabbing her by the wrists and shaking her like a rag doll.
“If you don’t get your hands off of me, I swear I am going to stab you with that knife,” Nova hissed as she pulled away from him and nearly punched him in the crotch as she picked up the knife and held a weapon on her husband for the first time ever. “I’ll cut into you like your butchers cut into me!”
“Nova, I hear the kids getting up…”
“Let them see it, because I am leaving you and taking them WITH me!” Nova snapped as she waved the knife. “I…”
“Nova!” Derek yelled in his strongest command voice. “I am giving you a direct order! CHILL FOR ONE MINUTE TO SAVE OUR MARRIAGE!”
“What marriage?” Nova insisted. “You used me as a brood mare for Stone and Anderson, you fucking…”
“Read this, you irrational goddamn BITCH!” Derek yelled as he thrust the next page of notes in front of her. “LOOK! It’s in big print!”
Nova snarled. She put the knife in another hand, and then she read out loud, “Potential birth father NOT TO BE TOLD. Matter is to be classified from both Commodore Wildstar and Lieutenant Commander Wildstar…by order of….ultimate line…commander of both officers….Singleton, H., General, Commanding General Earth Defense Forces,” Nova said as the kids and Annie came out. “Repeat, Wildstar, D., Commodore, never to be told, potential of violence feared from Commodore Wildstar if…see psych profile, appended….”
“Nova, I told you. They screwed me, too. Just like they screwed you,” Derek said as lightning went off outside.
“O my God,” she whispered. “I’m…I’m….I was so wrong, Derek!”
“Are we putting down the weapon, Captain?” Derek snapped.
“Aye, sir,” Nova said as she gingerly put the knife down on the table. “My god, Derek…your face…did I do that?”
Derek looked at himself in the mirror. His face was bruised with a big ugly red handprint from Nova. “Yeah. You did it all right…”
“Please forgive me, Derek,” Nova said in a very small voice as she stood with her head bowed. “Did you say..you wanted to save our….?”
Derek hugged Nova so hard he almost tackled her. “What the hell does it look like?”
“I could never live without you, Derek!” Nova screamed. She threw her arms around him and sobbed.
Derek held her with tears running down his cheeks as he rocked her like a baby in his arms and asked, “Are your wrists all right?”
“Yeah,” Nova said. “Is your face all right?”
“It hurts. We need ice,” Derek said.
“Annie, stay there,” Nova said as she looked at their nanny in her robe and nightgown. “We’re all right. We’re not…splitting up or anything…right?”
“Right,” Derek said. “Unless you want to leave?”
“Oh, forget I said that…” Nova sobbed. “As long as I’m not an irrational bitch…”
“You were…for maybe two minutes,” Derek said.
Nova stopped and glared at him.
“But who could blame you?” Derek said with a smile. “You’re…forgiven. I know it was a shock to you. It was a shock to me. Let me read that other file while you get that ice?”
“Good. I don’t want to see mine again..until…”
“Until what?” Derek said. “Until we rip Anderson and Stone new assholes?”
“Yeah, and shove copies of that report up them,” Nova laughed. “I’m not a bad proctologist…”
“Good. I think I’ll need one…”
Alex then ran up. “Dad, are you and mom…?”
“We had a bad argument but we made up,” Nova said as she worked on getting ice from the fridge, her usual cool, gentle demeanor reasserting itself. “Alex, help Annie get the younger kids to bed. We’ll discuss this with them in the morning. But we’re still a family…”
“What was that about a baby?” Alex said.
“You’re short a brother,” Derek said as Nova came back with some ice wrapped in a paper towel that she tenderly placed against his hurt cheek while kissing his forehead. “But I know where he is…”
“Where’s my brother?” Alex said, confused. “And who’s my brother?”
“Mark Anderson of G-Force,” Derek said. “But we are his real parents, and he is the right age to have been born in 2204, three years before you, Alex. He’s eighteen now. They lied to us when your mother was in the hospital years before you were born with a Tubal Pregnancy. They told us both it was a Fallopian Cyst….I believed them, and so did you, Nova. Then, they took the baby, but instead of reimplanting the fetus down lower in Nova’s womb, a routine microsurgery op, they instead put the baby in Tina Washio, who had our child as hers as a surrogate mother. Nova, how could they lie about those diseases like that?”
“I was in pain in my side…both conditions present with the same symptoms initially,” Nova said. “Luckily, we can tell the difference now with the scanners they have in our time, as opposed to the 21st Century, say,” Nova added. “Doctor Sane was in on it, he lied to me pretty damn good,” Nova said. “Excuse me a minute. We need to take a trip, Derek. Together, of course. Be right back.”
“Where do you want to go?” Derek said.
“Center Neptune. What do you think? Please fly us there in the Jet Recon Boat we have outside. Let’s get our Star Force uniforms on and go…”
“Nova, we’re not confronting Anderson tonight?”
“No, but please order him there tomorrow morning. Tonight, Derek, we have to see Mark…and Princess. They have to know. Tonight. He needs his real parents. BOTH of them, Derek.”
The Jet Recon Boat roared out of the Tokyo Megalopolis into the night a few minutes later. Nova and Derek had found out that Center Neptune was currently about 200 kilometers due west of Peru, so they made for South America on a westerly sub-orbital ballistic course.
About twenty-five minutes after depature from Tokyo, where it had been about 11 PM at night, the Wildstars began to approach the coast of Brazil, about 354 kilometers away from the Atlantic coast of that South American country. There, it was about 11 in the morning of that day.
“Fernando de Noronha,” Nova said after reading a readout. “Climate: tropical. A month out of the rainy season. Archipelago of 21 islands. The southernmost one is uninhabited except as a wildlife sanctuary. Great! Derek, land us there for a bit….”
“Why?”
“We….uh…need to work some things out between us before we go see Mark,” she said as she took her flight helmet off and shook her hair.
“I thought we did work them out at home, Nova….”
“We couldn’t work them out the way I wanted to in front of Annie and the kids, now, could we?” Nova said as she reached down and pulled off one of her yellow Star Force uniform boots. “Come on, Derek…get that helmet off,” she said impishly….
“I need it on to get us cleared for a landing on Fenando de Noronha del Sud,” Derek said as Nova unzipped his uniform shirt and began to caress his chest. “Uh….Nova…you have an interesting way of….working things…out…”
“Do you mind?” she purred as she unzipped her uniform, baring her breasts in the cockpit; easy, since she had gone naked under her uniform.
Derek called for and obtained landing clearance. When he was done, he worked on a landing while Nova got off her other boot. Then, with her bare feet up on the dashboard, she quickly unzipped her uniform and was in the nude even before they landed. Derek alternated the landing with touching various interesting parts of Nova’s exposed anatomy as they came down in the jungle.
Nova worked the canopy release with her toes, and hot tropical air filled the cockpit as she crawled over her husband and relieved him of his clothes.
After some touching and loving foreplay of each other’s initimate areas, they got out of the cockpit, and, holding hands, they walked a little through the steamy jungle to a spot by a lagoon.
There, they rolled around naked, hot, and unashamed in the foilage and ground cover, just as they had on their honeymoon, kissing and touching as Nova whispered, “I’m so sorry, Derek…about my being such a bitch before…”
“Nova, I understand why you did that….it was a shock..and…”
“I know you forgive me, but I want to make it up to you,” she sobbed. “This time, make love to me and make it all go away…please…”
“Make what go away, Nova?”
“Our
fight….my wanting to leave you…my wanting to cut you with a knife….your
grabbing me and cursing me,” she said as she got into his lap and began to play
with his manhood…”
“Up a little, Nova…yeah..right there…now….up…”
Drek partly lifted Nova on top of him, and, after touching her to make sure she was ready (she was; her naked womanhood was as dewy and hot as the jungle), Derek eased himself into her, and they kissed as their dance began, weeping a little as they made love right in the jungle.
They would be married for many, many more decades, well into their old age, but they would, quite deliberately, never again bring up the night Nova had turned a knife on her husband. It would be a skeleton in the closet among them that they would remember but never again mention, even though they would mention and remember this hot, impulsive bit of passionate sex in the jungle.
Nova was careful to avoid the slap mark she had left on Derek’s cheek as she hugged and caressed him, and he avoided touching her reddened wrists as he helped her make love to him while he thrusted and thrusted at her.
In the way of such things, as they made love, it hit them that it was only an hour ago that Nova had been threatening to leave Derek in her rage and pain. The sweetness between them made them feel better as their old love and trust returned, the pain between each other put far away, and the pain and loss they felt at having had a child taken from them redirected in their minds at Stone, Anderson, and even General Singleton. The couple would eventually have it out with all three of them, but it was more important, right now, to renew their love and their usual tight friendship and professional alliance.
The lovemaking, as in the way of sex after an argument, was hot, intense, and left them gasping after they climaxed and lay there in each other’s arms a few minutes later, wiggling thieir toes in the hot, wet foilage.
“It feels sort of like we made up,” Nova said in an understated voice as they sat laughing softly at each other.
“Yeah, it feels sort of like when Venture and I have a good fistfight. Did I ever tell you he came after me with a Bic pen once?”
“Yeah, and I’m sure you didn’t do this with him after you guys made up,” Nova said as she winked at him and played with his hair.
:”You can be one tough cookie at times,” Derek said. “Owww….my cheek…”
“Owww…my wrists,” Nova said. They just laughed. Then they gently kissed the reddened spots and soon, Derek had Nova on her back with her legs up while he kissed his way up her thighs and said, “Can I have some dessert?”
Nova nodded as Derek played with her breasts and nipples. Her toes were soon curling with pleasure as Derek found her spot and made love to her with his mouth. When he was done, he tenderly examined his wife’s private area for a bit. There, semi-buried in the small, neat tuft she kept at her bikini area, which Nova kept very presentable because she enjoyed sunbathing, beachcombing, swimming and skindiving either in garments that provided mininal coverage or in the nude when climate and propriety pernitted …semi-buried, Derek found a small mark on her there.
“Nova…is that?”
She nodded sadly. “Yes. It’s the scar from the operation in 2203. It’s…it’s where they took Mark out of me,” Nova said as fresh tears came. “It never kept me from giving birth the normal way three times later, in 2207 with Alex and Ariel, in 2209 with Steve and Anya, and in 2213 with little Teresa…Derek…how I wish they had let us keep him!” Nova screamed.
“It would have been your first time giving birth,” Derek said.
“I probably would have wanted to kill you,” Nova sobbed. “But it would have been worth it to be allowed to put him to my breast with you and the others watching and feed him. If we ever have another…”
“Nova, I’m…”
“We’re not too old to have another child together,” Nova countered. “It might
be a bit more high-risk, but…we could still do it….we…” She just began to cry
again. “Derek, I want to hold Mark and acknowledge him as my son…”
“So do I, Nova…” Derek said as he stroked his wife’s hair. “So do…I…”
TO BE CONTINUED…