by R Coots
“Ok!” The words left Jossa’s mouth in an explosion of panic. “Ok! We were running. From the Empire. We stayed on that planet while the rest of our crew went to hide our trail through the Barbicans. Just please. Please don’t hurt her.”
The man crossed his arms. Jossa breathed again, then realized that she was leaning so far over the edge of the table that she was in serious danger of falling off.
“That Barb only had three keys in the gate,” the warlord said as Jossa worked herself back onto the mattress. “This one, the one I came through, and the one the other half of our Fleet used. That’s not enough to hide a trail.”
“We had a Crack. Denz,” Jossa told him. She wished she dared to pull the blanket up around her neck, but she had a feeling doing so would just draw attention to the bits of her anatomy he had so far ignored. Not that they were much worth looking at in the first place.
Focus, you stupid woman. Just because he’s not hurting you now doesn’t mean he won’t if you slip up.
“Rui, my—the captain—had contacts in the military. They told him the planet had been emptied and was about to be sealed out of the Barbican network.” She shrugged. “So Denz went into the logs and erased our transport code. Then he was supposed to remove the system from the Barbican databases so the hunters wouldn’t know to look for it.” She sighed and looked over at Delfi’s sleeping form. “It must not have worked.”
The man frowned as he tapped a finger on his arm. She watched him, wondering if she’d managed to avert disaster or if he was just sadistic enough to take Del anyway. Finally, his hand stilled. “Go back to the military. They emptied the system on purpose?”
“I don’t know that it was ever highly populated,” she said. “Just what was on the Ajiri planet?”
One edge of his lip lifted as he looked down at Delfi.
“Yes! Fine, yes!” Jossa lurched in place and was brought up short by the sharp prick of needles being pulled from her skin. “As far as I know, they removed the stations and facilities entirely. We had to bring in all our equipment.”
“And the bajbar? You find a litter and—”
“What? Walk up to a den of blank bajbarog on an empty planet and—” Jossa stopped as she realized what he meant. “No. No. We didn’t raid a known breeding program. We had to find the bajbarog without help.” And what a miserable experience that had been. Not quite as bad as some of the creatures she’d tended for the fuerrus, but bad enough. She wondered if Rui managed to get the stink out of the ship before—
No. Don’t go there.
“Must have been some favor you owed, to get the first pair of cubs. I wonder, how’d you pay it back?” The look on the man’s face said he had some specific ideas as to that. Jossa looked back at her hands before her face could give anything away.
“Well, the Fleet’s fairly good at forcing Barbs open.” Jossa looked up to see that the man had moved around to examine the readouts on Delfi’s monitors. Jossa opened her mouth to protest, then stopped. He could move faster than her right now. What did she have to gain by antagonizing him?
As if he’d heard the thought, the man looked up. “Any way to know if someone tracked you down? Power strippers, shield flaws? Alarms?” He wandered towards her. She felt her skin come alive as he passed behind her.
“Anything to let him know your little bait and switch didn’t work?”
Jossa twisted as far as the tubes and needles would allow, but the man stood out of view. Hidden as he was by the raised head of her table, his voice was much more terrifying. She bit her lip and fought to keep her voice steady. “Not that I know of. Any program that would alert him could also be used to trace him.”
Jossa looked up just in time to see the man reach for the IV bag hanging off the control tower at the head of her bed. “Ah.” He grinned, leaned over the medunit, and all but breathed down her neck. “Serum. Should have looked here first. Your man was good with his code. Or did he belong to her?” He nodded at Delfi. Jossa froze. She didn’t have anything left to tell him. What else could she give him to keep him away from Del?
His eyes shifted, dropping from her face and lifting back up so quickly she almost didn’t catch it.
Oh. Yes. Well of course she could use that.
Slowly, she straightened, pulling her shoulders back and tucking her arms in. She didn’t have much in the breast department, but Rui had liked them fine. Odd, how she’d gotten so used to the room that she couldn’t feel the air on her bare skin. Once upon a time, she’d spent just as much time in a state of undress as clothed.
“We never wanted to hurt your people. Truly,” she said carefully, keeping her eyes focused on the man’s chin and the small beard that capped it. “If the bajbarog caused injury or death, I am sorry. They were put there as a temporary guard, nothing more.” Her throat closed on the last words and she stopped talking.
He shrugged, but his hand had drifted away from the IV bag as his eyes fixed on her chest. “Not my people, you know that. But they are ejiodiv do trubokoj.” He grinned at her. “What? Don’t think a Savage would know how to say ‘responsibility’?
“But we did lose people,” he continued. “Most of a squad. One of the techs left a daughter behind. I had to kill her father. I don’t need payment for the people we lost. That’s not the blood debt that’s owed here.” He looked down at Delfi, still lying oblivious to all the havoc she could be creating if she were awake. To the terror she caused even while unconscious. The man let one hand drift towards Del’s IV bag.
“No! No, please!” The needles pulled again as Jossa lurched towards him. “I’ll do anything. Just please—leave her alone!”
“Anything?” He stepped away from Del and over towards Jossa. His eyes were critical, but a smile tugged at his mouth. “That so? Well, you look better than you did when I pulled you out of the casket. I’ll give you that.”
Jossa told herself to keep still as he reached out and took a strand of her hair. She watched him wind it around a finger, feeling the sheets slide over her legs as she bunched the fabric in her fists.
“Got a bit of a problem though,” he said, letting her hair slide free. For a second she thought he’d go back to Del, but he left his hand where it was, hovering over her bare shoulder. “Ain’t all that interested in going blind in the process.”
Jossa didn’t even feel his hand drop. She was too busy being blown to bits by the emotional storm as it consumed her, body and soul.
> Chapter Thirteen
Jossa
Feels are too useful to put down with impunity when they lose themselves in the minutia of other people’s emotions. But they are also too dangerous leave unbonded. It is advisable to put them in cold storage at the onset of puberty, until someone capable of forming a soul bond can be found.
-observations, Professor Rusithe, New Hopks College of Medicine
Jossa cried out as rage and fear and deep, deep distrust ripped through her chest and set hooks into her heart. She was going to die. She was going to be torn apart by a man so much in conflict with himself that it was a wonder he could put one coherent thought after another.
Focus, she told herself, panting with the effort. You know how to do this. This is who you are. Now, what is he? It’s in there somewhere. It’s got to be. Everyone has a base set of emotions. This can’t be all of him. It can’t—
Reason faded under another onslaught of frustration and desire. He wanted her with something far beyond the lusts of average men. He needed to prove to himself—and to her—that she wasn’t better than him. That he had worth in and of himself. It was primal, this feeling. This lust-filled killing rage. Rooted in the core of his being, past the conscious level.
It was familiar somehow. But she couldn’t figure out why. Not with the roaring in her ears.
How could anyone live like this?
She tried to pull away. Tried to throw up shields between herself and the awful knowledge that he carried within. The certainty that the universe was a place of ki
ll or be killed. And her place in it wasn’t what she’d thought. She was to be killed. Everyone was, until he stood alone among the ashes of those who dared touch him.
But she was too weak to fight him, physically or mentally. His grip on her shoulder was unyielding, and her paltry shields disintegrated as fast as she threw them up, until she had nothing left to fight him with. His emotions, his very essence, drove down and stabbed her in the heart, then moved on to boil the blood in her veins and cook her mind.
“Please,” she whimpered, tears streaming down her face. “Please stop. It hurts.” She gasped for breath, choked on a sob, and gasped again. “It hurts!”
She didn’t know if she was talking about her heart or her shoulder.
“Open your eyes.” The very gentleness of his voice promised that she’d regret any disobedience. She opened her eyes.
And nearly gagged at the flickering light that surrounded her. She knew what it was. Nothing could counterfeit that orange glow. With growing horror, she realized that the patterns on the wall were those of a full maruste. Not just the initial phase, but the Oloteoj Azatlvl in all its glory. He’d activated the Open Blossom.
Her heart quailed.
Jossa tried to curl in on herself. The warlord’s grip on her shoulder stopped her. A whimper crawled up her throat. She twisted to look up into the man’s face. That hardened, scarred face, with burning eyes and lips drawn back over teeth that suddenly looked far too sharp. Nehkeh. Savage.
A reminder, in the most visceral of ways, exactly what his kind were capable of.
“Which glyph turns it off for good?”
Jossa stared. Worked her mouth.
The warlord snarled and let go of her shoulder. The light went out. Before she could do more than blink in the sudden gloom, he grabbed her again. By the arm this time. The light returned.
“Where the fuck do I cut you open to make it stop?” he all but roared in her face.
She stared at him, her own terror overriding the fury pouring through her nervous system like so many trails of liquid fire. Her eyes snagged on the glyphs shuddering and quaking on the wall, and something in her mind made the connection. Those were her glyphs. The warlord wouldn’t have the stylized rabbit of isk Churusimpir lis Kuchruog on his shoulder.
“No,” she whispered.
The warlord’s growl was animal. He let go of her arm, spun, and took the single step needed to bring him to Delfi’s side. Once he’d made sure Jossa was watching, he laid his palm on Del’s forehead. The sheets and pillow around her turned bright orange as light erupted from her back and leaked out around her body.
Jossa sucked in air. Tried to put her thoughts back together. Failed horribly. Flung a prayer to the Ancestors for guidance and cringed as the man turned back to her. He didn’t try to touch her again, but his expression and body language told her enough. His emotions hadn’t changed. If anything, they’d intensified, culminating in a mix of something she could only label as pure frustration.
“Tell me,” he growled, so low she almost couldn’t hear him.
“Do you know which glyph is which?” she asked. He probably did. She should stop being surprised by him knowing anything.
The lights turned on again as he laid his palm on her shoulder and eased her forward. She managed not to scream this time, mainly by focusing on the difference between the emotions and his actions. He had some control over himself, at least. Or else he’d be pounding her to bloody mush instead of talking to her.
“That’s lis Chuis isk Fuerrus.” He tapped at a spot just over her vertebrae and the lights flickered. “The Imperial family. Not some low level cousin.”
He had known exactly where it would lead. Every question. Every threat to Delfi.
He moved his finger to the side, and Jossa stepped on her instinctual urge to swat at the invader. “That’s a new one. But it’s a big Empire. Or it was.”
She reached one trembling hand up and wrapped it around her shoulder, feeling her fingers brush his where they rested on her skin. Fragments of amusement danced over old echoes of the anger and confusion, carrying faint images with them, too blurred for her to visualize clearly. He must be doing something to keep his emotions in check. Probably to keep her from crying instead of talking.
“This,” she said. “This is the mark of Churusimpir lis Kuchruog lis isk Fuerrus. I was sold into service before my first birthday, raised to my duty. Bonded to his family line unto eternity. Destined to have my death tablet set below his in the temple. Do you know what that means?”
By the time she was done speaking, she didn’t know if the anger in her voice belonged to the warlord or to herself. She didn’t care. This man. This Savage. Somehow he had the blood of the fuerrus in his veins, and now she was indentured to him! It was the only explanation that made sense, given all the time she and Delfi had spent in the caskets.
If he understood the implications, she was doomed. And Delfi with her. If he didn’t understand, she and her sousi would still be enslaved and used. Three hundred years! Three hundred years for the turning of time to bring them right back where they started!
Denial and frustration and a sort of resigned anger spread outward from his touch, leaving the fizzing burn of carbonation in her veins even after he took his hand from her back. Jossa huddled in on herself, watching as he paced out from between the two tables and then came back.
Finally, he stopped and looked at her. His face was expressionless, but now that she knew what lay beneath the mask, she wished she’d fought harder to be free of the lines and wires and everything holding her to this table. She shouldn’t have accepted Iira’s answer in regards to clothing. She should have—
”Well.” The man’s voice yanked her back to reality. “Now that we’ve established the problem, mind telling me the answer?”
“Um?” Jossa blinked and eased back as he leaned in close. What had he asked her? The events of the past minute or so had blown the question right out of her mind.
His fist hit the mattress next to her leg with a muffled thud. The table shook under her, and Jossa yipped as she clutched at the edges of the mattress.
“How the fuck do I turn it off? My blood. Your blood. It’s really easy. Just tell me where I start cutting.” A blade appeared in his other hand, the tip solidifying just as it touched Delfi’s exposed throat. “Or I’ll try hers instead.”
“Between!” Jossa reached for his arm and hauled. The lights of her maruste painted the walls around her, splashing across the man’s face like a horrible mask. She ignored them. “Between the family and the indentured! Please! Just leave her be!”
“Is it the same for her?” He didn’t move. Didn’t waver as she tried to pull him away from her sousi. Either she was too light, or he was made of solid silsteel.
“Yes! Yes!” Jossa let go of him and scrabbled for her hair, pulling the loose mass over her shoulder as she twisted to present as much of her back to him as she could manage. “It’s right over the vertebra. I promise.”
For a second she thought she’d failed. That he’d been faking the anger. That he’d just wanted to see what she knew. What she’d be willing to give up when pushed.
Then a lance of pain shot through her back, and she felt a line of warm wetness creep its way over her skin. The anger hit again, not as turbulent but just as sudden. Jossa gasped and shuddered. Something crawled through her nerves. Her skin itched.
She gritted her teeth and ducked her head. This was just the nanites in her blood adjusting to new information. Assimilating.
Acknowledging the man who owned her not just by virtue of having her on board a ship full of monsters, but down to the very marrow in his bones.
Captive.
Again.
> Chapter Fourteen
Syrus
When another covers the gap in your armor instead of taking advantage of your weakness, repayment must be made. Not only in full, but more than—to acknowledge the fact that your life was in his hands.
-Thank-Gifts, Fleet Training Manual
Syrus listened to the door close behind him and tried not to think about what he’d just done. Not that there was any way to deny the reality of the link between himself and the two women. But he’d just made it solid. Unavoidable. Although, now that the women wouldn’t be lighting up like bonfires every time he touched them, maybe he could downplay their importance to Quinn. Make him think the activation of their maruste was a fluke. The man had so far kept his peace about the display, but that probably wouldn’t last long.
Frowning, he stuck his helmet under one arm and looked down at the cut across his palm. Would it scar? he wondered. The palm was the traditional place to open so the blood of the owner could be mixed with the blood of the owned. He imagined he had scars on his back, but no one had told him one way or another if they were obvious. He’d never noticed scars on the hands of those who owned indentures. It seemed like something that should happen. A reminder that the owner held someone’s life in their hands.
Syrus tucked his hand back into the glove he’d stuffed in his belt and headed for the door out of his quarters. The women might not be an issue for him at the moment—not now that they wouldn’t light up every time he touched one of them. But the information he’d just gotten was about to completely change this Campaign.
His command room was empty, although someone had left a stack of slates on the corner of the table. He checked to see if any of them were active, but they were all in standby mode. Whoever had left him a load of documentation to look over would just have to wait. He stuffed the slates into one of the storage compartments in the wall and dropped into the quasi-throne at the head of the table. His hand stung when he tapped in the code to light up the wall display, but the bleeding had already stopped. Soon it would scab over.
An aide answered the vid when he keyed in the bridge. No, she said. Oona wasn’t there. Her shift was over. Quinn had come and taken her off with Iira. Syrus waved off the woman’s apologies and closed the connection.
