“It’s quite simple. Luther Kinross stole your children’s cryotubes, along with those of most crew member families, and filled them with his own men.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Where do you think Luther Kinross got his army from? All the crew families on the Trakis Two have been replaced, and I imagine it’s the same on the other ships.”
Her mind was refusing to accept the information. “My daughters…”
“Never left Earth. I’m sorry.”
A scream was rising inside her. She couldn’t focus; black spots danced in front of her eyes. Her head felt light, and she swayed on the chair and then crashed to the floor.
When Elvira came to, she had no clue how long she had been out. It didn’t matter. The comm unit was silent.
Kinross had lied to her all this time. She had no doubt he was capable of it. Had she believed she was so important to him that she was exempt from his ruthlessness?
Yes.
How could he get away with it? The only way was if the old crews were never woken from cryo. That would be no loss as far as Kinross was concerned. Most of the crew members were old, too old to be of any use.
And what did he plan to do to her once she had completed what she had been brought along to do?
She doubted she would survive much longer.
What had happened to her daughters? Had they really been left back on Earth? But she knew that Kinross couldn’t have risked leaving anyone alive. The ships had still been in contact with Earth for a number of years. If Luther had left them alive, then there was a good chance his actions would have been uncovered and the information sent to the fleet.
So he’d murdered her daughters. They’d been dead for five hundred years. Had they suffered?
Was there any chance that Milo had lied? Except she couldn’t think why. If her family had been alive, he could have used them to force her hand. If they were dead, how did he benefit by telling her? Perhaps he just meant to turn her against Luther.
She forced herself to breathe slowly, to push down the panic.
First, she needed proof.
She heaved herself up from the floor. Her hands were shaking. Swallowing, she steadied herself and then crossed to the computer terminal. She lowered her head to the retinal scan and the screen flared to life. She worked quickly, accessing the ship’s backup files. She flicked through the cryotube records, filtered them for crew family, then found what she needed.
The family of the second-in-command of the Trakis Three, fourth rotation, consisted of his wife and two sons aged five and six. She took a note of the numbers and then hurried out.
She tried to work out how many men Luther had. She figured around fifty. That would mean the vast majority were still in cryo. Each ship must carry around nine hundred crew family. She headed to the cryotube chamber.
While she had no religious beliefs, as she walked the rows of tubes, glancing at the faces, she said a silent prayer. She wanted so badly to find the little boys sleeping peacefully. That would at least give her some hope that her daughters might still be alive. That Milo had been lying for whatever reasons.
She counted off the numbers, her feet slowing as she got close. She had to force herself to look down at the tube that should have contained five-year-old Benjamin Peters. Something broke inside her as she stared at the figure inside the cryotube. It was no five-year-old boy but a fully grown male. Perhaps the numbers were wrong. Perhaps the boy was in a different tube. But she knew she was fooling herself, and a sob caught in her throat.
She leaned against the cryotube, as everything she had worked toward crumbled and disintegrated, leaving her broken and empty.
They were dead. All dead. And had been for centuries.
As she accepted it, a rage started to build inside her. She’d done everything he asked, and he’d killed her babies.
She would make him pay. For a second, she considered contacting Milo. She presumed that he wanted to get Destiny out, and she could help with that. But she couldn’t be sure that Luther wouldn’t get her back. He had the resources. Hundreds of loyal men at his disposal. At the thought, a new wave of rage washed through her, filling the emptiness.
He would die for this. A slow death, and every minute of it he