Her Cold-Blooded Mercenary

by Lea Linnett

  Taz looked down at her hands, inspecting her fingertips. She agreed that excusing bad deeds with credits was wrong, but… “Ever since what happened in New Chicago, I’ve been thinking.” She took a deep breath. “Is it ever justified? Shouldn’t we be trying to be better?”

  Cara glanced at her, before dropping her gaze to Taz’s twisting hands. “We don’t have the luxury of being nice, Taz. Sometimes, you need to make sacrifices to fight back.”

  “You let that girl go. The one in the Senekkar who was… in love with her levekk boss. You didn’t sacrifice them.”

  Cara’s lips pursed, and she looked away. “Yeah.”

  They didn’t say anything else on the matter as they trudged back to the flophouse, and they arrived at the room to find Deeno and Kamanek sitting in a similarly awkward silence. The cicarian was watching the warehouse through the window while the levekk lounged on the cot, looking like he was close to napping. Kamanek sat up when they entered, though, his gaze adhering to Taz like a magnet to metal, searching her for any sign of injury. It softened when he evidently found nothing, and he remained silent.

  “How did it go?” Deeno immediately asked. “Did you get anything?”

  Cara held up the datapad. “Quite a bit. I want you to help me go over this, though. Our informant is… complicated.”

  “It’s Niro,” Taz added, meeting Kamanek’s eye when he leaned forward interestedly.

  “That asshole?”

  “See, Cara?”

  “We’re just going to see where this goes,” Cara said, heaving a sigh. “We’re not going in blind. Besides, the levekk has good information. Apparently this whole thing is being run by a lender called Siikas,” she added, addressing the two males.

  “Ceren Siikas?”

  All eyes turned to Kamanek, who had gone rigid. Taz noticed his hand gripping the edge of the cot, and frowned.

  “Why, you know him?” asked Cara.

  “I… might. He’s bad news.”

  “We’ll keep that in mind.”

  Kamanek nodded, but his eyes had turned distant, and he avoided Taz’s gaze. She wanted to ask him more questions, and more than anything she wished she could go and sit at his side because this quietness was unusual for him, but Cara soon sent him and Deeno to the other room to sleep. They’d been up watching for most of the day.

  The levekk made sure to brush by her as he left, somehow managing to run a claw down the length of her finger without catching Cara or Deeno’s notice. The touch sent a shiver running through her, but as she took up Deeno’s spot by the window, she couldn’t wipe her concern for him from her mind.

  Who was Ceren Siikas, really? And why did Kamanek seem to know him?

  22

  If Kamanek thought being apart from Taz was torture, being stuck in the same room and unable to touch her turned out to be far worse.

  She was by the window again, mere feet away from where Kamanek lay on the cot after taking the first watch that morning. If he had his way, he’d simply get up and walk over to her. He would slide in behind her, running his claws down her side until she arched into him. He would nuzzle her neck and reach down, down, down to the wet heat of her core. But he couldn’t, not with Deeno sitting with his back to the wall on the other side of the room, glancing up at regular intervals to make sure Kamanek hadn’t gone feral and attacked her, or whatever sub-species assumed his kind were compelled to do to them.

  The three of them were alone. Cara had taken the second room for herself so she could go over the data Niro had given her, and Deeno had had his face buried in his own datapad since the morning, typing away at a narrow keyboard of cicarian design. He was apparently writing some kind of computer virus for Niro, and it kept him busy, his eyes flying from the datapad in his lap to the three others he’d scattered on the floor around him faster than Kamanek could track.

  He’d wondered more than once whether he could sneak a touch here or there while Deeno was distracted, but he didn’t dare. Half because he knew Taz would react badly, and half because the impulse scared him. Why was his self-control—something he’d envisioned to be thick and solid—now hanging by a thread? Why was the urge to touch Taz so insistent, when he’d tasted her only two days earlier?

  The only thought rivaling his desire for Taz was the shard of icy unease lodged in his gut like a splinter. A low hum of nausea had roiled through him since Cara and Taz returned the day previous, with the name of the last levekk Kamanek ever wanted to see staining their lips.

  Ceren Siikas. His old boss. The guy that Kamanek had traveled all the way to the edge of the Constellation just to escape.

  Even the thought of him made Kamanek shudder. Not that the guy was particularly formidable, but he took his businesses—both legal and illegal—seriously. And when it came to credits, he was vicious. He surrounded himself with mercenaries who had few qualms about recovering his money and pride in whatever way he saw fit. Which was often bloody. The mercenaries he attracted were usually disgraced from the military, or grew up in the most cutthroat of slums.

  Or, like Kamanek, they owed Siikas something.

  Either way, Siikas was petty, and he used his significant connections for revenge more often than not.

  He’d hoped he would never have to consciously think about the levekk ever again in his life. But as Siikas so often proved to him, the Constellation was a far smaller ecosystem than most people imagined it to be.

  Kamanek rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands and blew out a deep breath. Unsurprisingly, the movement drew Taz’s attention. Her back was straight, her focus on the warehouse below resolute to anyone watching. But Kamanek was all too aware of the way her dark eyes flickered to him, her eyebrows drawing together in worry.

  She didn’t need to say anything; he knew she disliked the mood that had settled over him since Siikas came up. She’d been sneaking glances at him all morning and throughout the previous night, her full lips thinning in consternation. On the one hand, he enjoyed that he occupied her thoughts as much as she had usurped his, but on the other…

  He didn’t like seeing her like this, buttoned up and concerned. He missed the firecracker who yelled and shouted at him, who gave as good as she got.

  Kamanek was pulled from his thoughts by the door swinging open, and both he and Taz were halfway to standing before they realized it was just Cara.

  “What’s wrong?” Taz asked immediately, and he thought he heard the tiniest scrap of anticipation, as if she’d been wanting a distraction as much as he had.

  Cara hung in the doorway, leaning through the small opening she’d made. “Nothing. Any movement?”

  “None.”

  She nodded, and then her brown eyes cut to his. “Come with me, I need to speak to you.”

  Taz and Deeno visibly drew back in surprise, and Kamanek’s brow plate rose involuntarily. “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  Cara withdrew without another word, and Kamanek was left blinking in her wake. He exchanged a glance with Taz, before shrugging. “Wonder what I did this time?”

  The two sub-species were silent as he left the room, gently shutting the door behind him, and he headed down the hallway towards their second room with a slight spring in his step. Meeting with Cara almost certainly meant trouble for him, but he couldn’t deny it was a welcome distraction.

  “Who is Ceren Siikas?” asked Cara as soon as the door shut behind him. She was sitting in a chair by the window, a datapad open on her lap, waiting for him.

  He frowned, his brow plate dipping. “Exactly who Niro told you he was. Lender, purveyor of stolen goods, control-freak.”

  Her gaze stayed sharp. “But you know him?”

  Kamanek blinked slowly, taking stock of the human that stood before him. He had no doubt that she was tough—she’d willingly agreed to be alone with him even after her past… history with his kind. There was an iciness to her, especially now, her shoulders squared and her head held high, completely invulnerable. She wasn’t a delic
ate ice sculpture that you could chink away at with small tools. She was a glacier, and her stern gaze told him she wouldn’t allow herself to be intimidated by him.

  “Answer my question,” she prodded, her eyebrows flattening in a way he hadn’t seen before. Rather than anger, it was more like bored disapproval. “Remember that it only takes one comm call to Mila for you to lose your paycheck, mercenary.”

  Kamanek’s lips thinned. For someone so close to Taz, Cara couldn’t be any more different. He could recognize now all the little things that proved their lack of blood relation. Taz’s skin, eyes, and hair were darker, and she had a more narrow frame. She had sharper features, but Cara’s held the worn-in lines of someone who’d been responsible for others for a long time. Where Taz’s hair was a riot of movement, Cara’s was neat, pulled back into a tight ponytail.

  But the differences weren’t just physical. Where Taz was reactive, Cara cut off any teasing before it began. This wasn’t a human that he could bullshit.

  “I do know him,” he said, meeting her eye. “We had a disagreement over some credits in the past.”

  “You owe him money?”

  Kamanek pursed his lips. “…I do.”

  “But that’s not all,” she continued, her eyes narrowing, and he cursed her sharpness. “What happened?”

  He shifted on his feet, his mind reeling away from the memories that had circled his mind all morning. He didn’t like that chapter of his life—liked it even less than his many years in the military and on Origin, in fact—but Cara was staring him down from her seat by the window. He noticed now that her comm was sitting on the arm of her chair, just inches from her fingers.

  “I… worked for him,” he admitted. “I couldn’t pay off the debt I amassed, so he took me on as muscle, making me pay it back with interest.”

  “And I’m assuming you never managed it?”

  “Of course not. You know how these things go. He slaps interest on, uses every fuck up as a reason to add more debt. It’s never-ending. I cut myself loose about six months ago, and looked for more work. That’s how I ended up here, actually. Not much work in the busy parts of the Constellation for someone who’s pissed off a guy like Siikas.”

  But Cara was frowning again, softer now than before. “You left him six months ago?”

  He paused, nodding slowly. “Yeah. We were on CL-29, at his private villa. Someone blew up his offices and I used the confusion to get the fuck out of there.”

  “The servers that Niro mentioned…” she muttered to herself, before her voice strengthened. “It wasn’t you that did it?”

  “No. Come to think of it, he probably assumes it was, though,” he said with a shrug. He hadn’t really worried about it before now. There were plenty of reasons for him to avoid Siikas, and he’d been more concerned with keeping a safe distance between them than worrying about what would happen if he was found.

  “If he thinks that, why haven’t you left yet?” she asked, and Kamanek shivered. She might as well have read his mind.

  “Excuse me?”

  “What’s keeping you here?” She leaned forward, her brown eyes sharper than any mishaan in military school that had tapped their claws against their desk and questioned him for his truancy.

  The first response to tremble against his lips was one word: Taz. Siikas wasn’t a levekk to be trifled with, and the idea of absconding now and leaving her to deal with him—or his mercenaries—in any capacity made him sick. But he couldn’t very well tell Cara that.

  So, he settled on the only explanation that was safe. “There’s a reason I couldn’t pay Siikas back. I’m not exactly flush with credits. I’m not going to bite the hand that feeds me and miss out on my paycheck,” he said, shrugging as nonchalantly as he could.

  “And what if Siikas offers to pay you more?”

  He did manage to laugh at that. “Trust me, if Siikas actually showed up here, the last thing he’d do is offer me a job. I think he’d rather mount my head on his wall.”

  Cara stared at him long and hard, and he couldn’t escape the feeling that she was looking through him again, reading his mind like lines of code on a datapad. Whatever she saw seemed to convince her, however, as she leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other.

  “I never thought I’d be glad for a mercenary’s lust for credits, but I suppose I never thought I’d have to work alongside one, either.” She glanced up at him. “Just so we’re clear, if your connection to him jeopardizes this mission in any way, you’ll have more than your paycheck to worry about.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The human’s expression then dropped another couple of degrees in temperature, her eyes boring into his. “And if anything happens to Taz, I will hunt you across the Constellation if I have to. I’ll make Siikas look like a kitten, I promise you.”

  As she stared him down, Kamanek couldn’t help but wonder if she knew. Or if she’d seen something in the looks he and Taz exchanged. Whether she did or not, the threat was clear, and his smile didn’t reach his eyes when he said, “I think she’ll be able to look after herself just fine.”

  For the first time, a small smile tilted the corners of Cara’s mouth. “You know, you’re right. She can look after herself. Which means you won’t need to concern yourself with her. I don’t think she needs the distraction of dealing with someone’s unwanted obsession, and I don’t think you need your focus so unduly divided, either.”

  He dropped his gaze to the ground, hiding his wince. So Cara had noticed. He’d thought he’d been discreet—and maybe he had been, seeing as Cara wasn’t coming after him with a knife yet—but it obviously wasn’t enough to hide his attraction completely. He put his hands together behind his back, his blunt fingers twisting with claws.

  “Are we clear?”

  He straightened, feeling like he’d been transported back to military school, and said for the second time, “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You can return to the others, then.”

  He did so immediately, his mind a blur as he walked back to the other room. It wasn’t even the fact that Cara had caught on that bothered him. He expected her to be suspicious of his flirting, and he would work harder to curtail it for Taz’s sake, but ultimately, they should be fine as long as Cara never found out how Taz had reciprocated his attention.

  No, Cara’s words wounded him because he’d heard them countless times before. He’d heard them in that tiny disciplinary room in Senior Division, with Tanis’ fingers mere inches from his own and a smug grin on her face. He’d heard it again in a far larger disciplinary room after her death, when his superiors were discussing whether to posthumously strike her from the honor record.

  There’s no place for attachments in war.

  They threaten the focus of the unit. They unbalance it. This… incident is proof enough.

  And part of him thought they were right. That Cara was right.

  From what he’d seen, love was only good for getting people killed.

  He was quiet when he returned to Deeno and Taz, and he could feel his human’s eyes on him as he moved over to the cot, flopping down on it. She stared openly, her brow furrowed, and he did his best to smile easily at her, even with his mind reeling.

  Not long after, however, Deeno ducked into the bathroom, and Taz rounded on him.

  “What did Cara want?”

  “It was nothing,” he said, turning back to the tracker he’d pulled from his satchel. It was barely worth checking, since the beacon had probably been lost to Niro’s laundry by now, but it was something to occupy himself with.

  But Taz’s frown only deepened. “It didn’t sound like nothing. Is it something to do with Siikas?”

  He fought back a wince, his heart sinking when her expression turned triumphant.

  “Do you know him?” she asked, voice tight.

  “Only vaguely,” he lied, hating himself for it, but unable to think of an alternative. He’d done dirty work for Siikas, work that made his skin crawl, an
d he knew Taz would never accept it. She’d fought hard for her place in the Lodestars, but compromise often seemed like a foreign word to her. She would never understand why he didn’t fight back. Why he didn’t put a stop to Siikas’ activities sooner.

  He couldn’t face the idea of her learning those things. Not after the warmth with which she’d looked at him in this very cot less than a day ago. He’d loved her fire, but if she learned the truth, it would quickly turn volatile.

  There was a small part of him that wanted to tell her, nonetheless. That felt obliged to tell her, as if she deserved it after the closeness they’d shared, but that part scared him. It felt dangerously close to that one thing he feared above all else.

  The thing that had stolen Tanis, his best friend, away from him.

  Attachment.

  So, he shut it down, instead giving Taz nothing more than a shrug. She opened her mouth to argue, but then the bathroom door swung open again, and she was forced to turn away.

  Kamanek went back to his perusal of the tracker as Deeno sighed heavily and returned to his spot amid the piles of tech, and tried to ignore the guarded looks Taz was now sending him.

  He was rapidly growing aware that he would give her just about anything in the world, but he couldn’t give her that side of himself. It was ugly, and it would poison her against him forever.

  He couldn’t bear that.

  23

  It had been a week since they met with Niro, and six days since Cara pulled Kamanek aside to talk, and Taz’s curiosity had become a physical ache.

  With Deeno often camped in the corner working on his code for Niro, and Cara ensuring that Taz was never left alone with Kamanek for longer than it took to use the bathroom, she’d had no opportunity to ask him about it again. The questions burned inside her: Who was Ceren Siikas? How did Kamanek know him? What exactly had Cara wanted to know?

  Part of her feared that it was about her, about their joining. Kamanek’s gaze still scorched her, his desire obvious, but the flirting had all but dried up since his talk with Cara. It couldn’t be that, though. Cara would have said something. But that left Taz with even fewer answers, and she was already frustrated enough.