Page 7 of House Divided
Chapter Two
Enoch Immanuel opened his eyes. The nightmare ride was over, and consciousness was returning. His head felt muzzy, but the pod was pumping highly oxygenated air to compensate for the effects of the high-G flight.
The woman.
He turned his head to see if Madeline was still alive. Her eyes were closed, but her chest was steadily rising and falling. Enoch was surprised at how much relief he felt at that knowledge.
He released his safety restraints and stood up carefully. His system, biologically enhanced to accept the rigors of rapid space travel, was recovering quickly. Enoch looked down at the unconscious Madeline. Fiery-red hair framed an elfin face. Despite her delicate features, she had a firm set to her jaw that spoke of a person with determination.
This woman!
Her presence had been clouding Enoch’s judgment from the moment he first laid eyes on her. She reminded him so much of Grace, his beloved wife, dead many years ago in the aftermath of an Alliance bombing. In fact, when her face had first appeared on his monitor, he had briefly thought itwasGrace, as impossible as that would have been.
Since he had made planetfall on Tarma, a part of him had kept an eye on Madeline, always aware of where she was, regardless of whom he was dealing with. Even when her fool of a brother had confronted him, a part of Enoch still was thinking about Gra—dammit—Madeline.
Thinking about Jack made him think about Aria. He had raced across the galaxy to rescue her, and she had turned and gone with the bloody pirate without even saying goodbye.
Enoch put his face in his hands and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and slowly let it go. He straightened.
Do the work that’s in front of you,he thought, going back to his first principles.Do what is necessary, whatever the cost. And never, ever, give an inch.
Enoch opened the medical cabinet that featured prominently on one wall of the ship and looked through the shelves until he found what he wanted. He picked up an inhaler, set the dosimeter, placed it beneath Madeline’s nose, and activated it. Her face wrinkled as the chemicals brought her back to consciousness.
“Wake up,” said Enoch. “We need to move.”
Madeline blinked as she rubbed her face. “Ugh. Where are we?”
“Don’t know yet,” muttered Enoch, going through the ship’s supplies. He had found a backpack and was pulling things out of compartments and stuffing them in the bag. “But we have to assume that someone will be looking for us shortly.”
Madeline fumbled with the safety restraints.
“The others!” she suddenly remembered, sitting up and wincing. “Did they make it? Where are they?”
“No way to tell,” replied Enoch brusquely. “That’s the whole point of a scattershot evacuation system. Whoever sets it up locks in coordinates for the different pods then wipes all memory of the locations from the system. It’s designed to prevent pursuers from tracking where you’ve gone. Kind of a last-ditch escape plan.”
“So nobody knows where we are?” asked Madeline, incredulous.
Enoch shrugged. “Your friend Marc Duchesne might, if he was the one who designed the system and has a record of the different locations. Otherwise, no.”
Madeline dropped her head. “Unbelievable.”
Enoch tossed a backpack in her direction. “You’re going to need to carry things,” he said. “I’ll make a pile for you, and you can pack them.”
Madeline pushed herself out of the flight chair. “Okay.”
“Water will be the heaviest. We have a purification system, but who knows what’s out there. How much can you carry?”
“I don’t know,” Madeline admitted. “I’ve never done this before.”
Enoch turned and looked at her in a way that made Madeline blush. His gaze assessed her without compassion or judgment.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she muttered.
He shook his head and resumed packing.
“Look, I’m sure you’re some kind of incredible survivalist and all that, but this is new to me, okay? I’ll do the best that I can. I’m not some delicate flower that’s just going to wither away,” grumbled Madeline, taking some items from the pile Enoch had made and shoving them into a backpack.
“Sure,” said Enoch, continuing to rustle through the pod.
